New Swedish Books, Spring 2018 1
51 Spring 2018 Lotta Olsson (text) b. 1973 Olof L
andström (ill) b. 1943 When We Close Our Eyes Publisher Lilla Pirat www.lillapiratforlaget.se Rights Lilla Pirat linda@lillapiratforlaget.se Lotta Olsson Selected Works Morris och strumpan (together with Maria Jönsson, ill) Picture Book 2002 Konstiga djur Chapter Book 2011 Mitt bland stjärnor (together with Olof Landström, ill) Picture Book 2016 Literary Prizes Barnboksplaketten 2011 Kallebergerstipendiet 2012 When We Close Our Eyes Lotta Olsson and Olof Landström’s first collaboration was the much celebrated creation story Mitt bland stjärnor. They now return with an equally poetic story of what happens in the land of sleep and dreams, the land beyond our awakened reality, told through the experiences of an old lady. The sky is a sea and an ocean/ to be carefully carried in a cup/ and who gives a hoot about the notion/that your body has locked you up. The rhymes are affectionately inviting and pull the reader along. And Landström’s well-judged, subtly elegant watercolours, outlined in ink, also capture a playful, dreamlike existence. With a friendly tenderness the picture book plays with different perspectives, described tactfully from an old lady’s point of view. Landström’s instinctive feeling for encapsulating in his images the way the hand squeezes the handbag or the way the coffee is measured is deeply moving. The tone of the text is true to its subject – sleeping and dreaming, as it gently rocks its reader to sleep. Olof Landström Selected Works Nisse hos frisören (together with Lena Landström) Picture Book 1991 Bu och bä i städtagen (together with Lena Landström) Picture Book 1996 Pom och Pim (together with Lena Landström) Picture Book 2012 Selected Literary Prizes Elsa Beskow-plaketten 1992 Heffaklumpen 2006 Astrid Lindgren-priset 2009 Photos: Ola Jacobsen