”Come home Laila” is a seemingly simple picture book about a girl hiking in dramatic scenery and on the barnplanet wonderfully uncomplicated.
Here goes a unconcerned girl in, wearing a green body and rocker pettiskirt straight through the ”smoke and fire” while the diverse scenrummen suggests great danger: a desolate desert, jättevatten, smoldering volcano, a forest with wolves and a impregnable mountains she ascends and is able to leave.
But Lindström embeds her in a secure presence. She feels both seen and taken care of in the cavalcade of helpers and attributes that the images along with the 51 words, short text frambesvärjer.
the Children have, as a rule, no objection to ”nolldramaturgier”. They have no expectation of realism and logic.
She has a travelling companion of a little bird who followed her at a safe distance; there stands a lonely lyckoklöver in an otherwise infertile soil; in each of the vulnerable situation she becomes equipped with what she needs: transportation, food, warm fire, umbrella. Poetry is, of course, where in the text calling for You-tone of voice, but also as the comedy comes in the barnlogiskt concrete hjälpkatalogen:
You get an air mattress,
a lake.
a path.
You get a hallonyoghurt
and a mountain.
You get a campfire, a view
and an umbrella.
”Her bilderboksberättelser are open invitations to the reader ”to walk around in and experience it on your own.”, writes Ulla Rhedin. Illustration: Eva Lindström
up Here on the mountain occurs a stop, a rhythmic cesur, where the security for a moment broken, and where we may be the only time to hear the girl’s voice, A cliff? But hjälpkatalogen continue and escalate, and we get a glimpse of the characters that she soon sits down at the table at the warm spaghettigrytan as her longing friends have prepared. Just as it should be!
the Children have, as a rule, no objection to ”nolldramaturgier” or stories without clearly berättarjag; they fill in and fill out all the obestämdhetsställen and ellipses, and have no expectation of realism and logic. They seem but furthermore carry out what we call the performative, interpretive reading; they get together what they read into meaningful wholes: they always understand, but in its own way.
and the course participants, who on my behalf have read, interpreted, and reviewed, Come home Laila” have shown different degrees of uncertainty and joy in the face of tomrumstekniken of Eva Lindström.
Bokidéerna occurs as fragments and diffuse ideas that can be developed into a bilderboksberättelse in the long dynamic arrangements between text and image.
”Educational” reading, as in one of the nordic capital city, seems to Lindström create unsafe vuxenläsare, and you see more constraints than opportunities: too difficult, too abstract, for oförlöst story and in addition the grumsigt painted.
”Aesthetically” read in the other, participants are enthusiastic and look more to the biblical connotations in ökenvandrings and bergsmetaforiken. You envy this bilderbokskonstnärens sovereign mixed media of transparent, laserande coat of paint in the akvarellteknik adjacent to the bold opaque color plane in the gouacheteknik and to personteckningens fragile blyertskonturer. Their interpretations are performative, just as children, but is (of course) on the other reference levels.
”as the comedy comes is in the barnlogiskt concrete hjälpkatalogen.”, writes Ulla Rhedin. Illustration: Eva Lindström
several years exploring a specific theme that she, in an article from the 2015 describe in detail – on the excellent and indispensable site picturebookmakers.com – that her later books is about the ”lost things, lost people, friendship and no friendship, longing”.
Bokidéerna occurs as fragments and diffuse ideas that can be developed into a bilderboksberättelse in the long dynamic arrangements between text and image, and often lands in an openness that she doesn’t always understand: ”A good thing for me is to not know everything.”
The interesting thing with Lindström’s story is that the main character may not even need to be
Her bilderboksberättelser are open invitations to the reader ”to walk around in and experience on their own.
”Come home Laila” is a in the line of ”the dangerous journey-stories”, in level, both with Tove Jansson’s famous ”The dangerous journey” (1977), in which she with the girl susan’s visit to the Moomin take leave from the moomin world and the spouses Tidholms likewise, the award-winning masterpiece, ”the Journey to Ugri-La-Brek” (1987).
While Susanna walk together with a group of Muminvarelser in a threatening, expressive landscapes, where she is at a precipice is saved by a hot air balloon, wants the kids the Bucket and the Ant find his missing grandpa to set the importance to them (the debt and goodbye)to the question: ”Was it because we klampade in the stairs?”.
Lindström’s story is that the main character may not even need to be, perhaps she is dead or just an idea or dream in the pending children’s event or lekvärld. Read in this way, it would the main characters be the ramsande and longing the kids in the kitchen on the last spread, while Laila – in Arabic the name means ”beloved”- is an object for their vague yearning for meaning or excitement in life, a kid’s equivalent to luffarnas Godot of Beckett.
In such a reading (as the children image picture) to drop pieces in place. That Laila is so stylized and uttryckslös, that the landscapes are so undifferentiated, the mountains so dumb that some of my adult readers described it, seems both reasonable and logical from a consistent child’s perspective, where she is seen as ”a fabrication” by quite young children.
What shall we do with the Eva Lindström? To thank her, to see and to love what she does, give her all the Augustpris in the world, for her artistic consistency and bold risk-taking.
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