Wolf Erlbruch. Award Laureate 2017 1
Like many of his peers, Wolf Erlbruch is skeptica
l of pigeonholing books by age or target audience. He has said that he is not so concerned with making books especially for children: his greater concern is to be honest about his own feelings and convey this in his work. A frequent moral of Wolf Erlbruch’s stories is that we should all try to see ourselves with some perspective, and accept even our unattractive qualities – we all have them, and perhaps it is really these qualities that make us special. Die fürchterlichen Fünf (1990, The Fearsome Five) explores this existential puzzle by assembling five animals – a hyena, a spider, a bat, a rat and a turtle – whose looks we traditionally find ugly or frightening. The characters all share the trauma of social isolation and being rejected by the world around them. In the story, the five friends try together to find recognition and acceptance of all their qualities, both in themselves and in others, despite their peculiarities. In his characterizations of the ‘fearsome five,’ we see Erlbruch the illustrator working at the height of his imaginative powers. There is a conscious nod to director Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, in the austere, Asian-inspired backgrounds that call to mind Japanese woodblock prints. Inspired by Surroundings Many of Wolf Erlbruch’s books have autobiographical elements. His little mole wears a pair of round glasses, just like his illustrator. Leonard (1991, Leonard) is not only the title of one of Erlbruch’s books but also the name of his son. We sense that the book’s topic – fear of dogs – was a concern for the real-life Leonard, whose father, coming up with a solution as unexpected as it was effective and ingenious, decided to turn it into a book. Frau Meier, die Amsel (1995, Mrs. Meyer, the Bird) features a distracted husband, also with round glasses, absorbed in himself and his artistic endeavors and unreceptive to the possibilities and miracles of everyday life. His wife, by contrast, stays open to the aspects of reality that