Читать книгу A Companion to Children's Literature - Группа авторов - Страница 56

In the aftermath of World War II, publishers, educators, and picturebook authors, particularly in Europe, sought to publish and create picturebooks that were not explicitly ideological. In order to achieve this goal, they either relied on popular and traditional picturebooks devoid of any propagandistic effects or contacted already established picturebook makers as well as new talents in order to meet the increasing demand for aesthetically attractive picturebooks. A pioneering role can be attributed to the Swiss illustrators Alois Carigiet, Hans Fischer, and Felix Hoffmann, whose lavishly illustrated picturebooks introduced a new modernist style in European picturebook art. The same applies to some Scandinavian picturebook-makers, such as Lennart Hellsing, Tove Jansson, Egon Mathiesen, and Arne Ungermann (Christensen 2003; Druker 2008). While some European countries, such as the Nordic countries, France, and Italy, regarded the year 1945 as a new start – Sweden even claimed this year as the beginning of a new “Golden Age” in Swedish children’s literature – publishers as well as picturebook-makers in other countries, such as Germany, Poland, and Spain, struggled with difficult constraints due to paper restrictions, the poor quality of the printing press, and sometimes even censorship measures. In order to satisfy the hunger for ideologically innocuous picturebooks, publishers reprinted traditional picturebooks from the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, which were regarded as classics and therefore politically harmless.

The preference for the depiction of idyllic scenery and a harmonious and joyful way of life is evident in many picturebooks released in the first five years after the end of the war. Fairy tales and fantastic stories predominated, while realistic stories mostly showed people’s everyday lives in a rural setting untouched by the atrocities of war and the struggle for survival. Despite these conservative and sometimes even nostalgic tendencies, a wealth of publishers and illustrators were drawn to the once proscribed modernist traditions of the 1920s and 1930s. By establishing a new connection to the broken avant-garde ambitions in the realm of picturebook design, they contributed to the renewal of the picturebook as an art form, which was subject to ideological misuse and propagandistic effects during the war years. Picturebooks created by exiled authors and illustrators as well as heretofore unpublished modernist picturebooks could find a niche with ambitious small publishers, despite having limited commercial potential.

As opposed to these picturebooks, which have largely subsequently disappeared from use, Reverend W. Awdry published a longstanding best seller with The Three Railway Engines (1945), which was the first book of the famous Railway series, better known through the second volume, Thomas the Tank Engine (1946). The author created 23 volumes up to 1972. Launched as a TV series with the title Thomas & Friends on British children’s television in 1984 and continuously renewed through rebranding and transmedia extensions until the present, this picturebook series is an early example of a multimedia system complemented by merchandising products.

The foundation of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) in 1946 and the official conferences and meetings activated by these institutions had a far-reaching impact on children’s literature in Europe and even beyond. In order to spread the ideals of tolerance, solidarity, and peace – as announced by the UNESCO charter – policymakers and practitioners demanded a new children’s literature that should particularly represent these ideas. One of the first picturebooks that targeted the issues of diplomacy and negotiations as a potential means of peacemaking was Erich Kästner’s Die Konferenz der Tiere (The Animals’ Conference, 1949), with illustrations by Walter Trier. Similar picturebook projects were realized in the ensuing years.