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Frantz Wittkamp's long goodnight poem carries children gently and entertainingly into the land of dreams. Like a little stream, the poem meanders lightly and fluidly through the landscape; firstly through the town, then past the houses and other buildings - and wherever we go, we encounter the strange people brought to life by the illustrator Jenny Brosinski. Wittkamp's calm text, which entirely eschews all that is sensational, goes together perfectly with Brosinski's detailed, imaginative illustrations; both the text and pictures alike share one aim: to make the child's path to sleep as pleasant as possible. Wittkamp manages this through the calm rhythm of his poetry, and Brosinski does so via the plethora of detail in her drawings which soon ensures that the child's eyes will shut of their own accord.
Wittkamp's text snakes its way through the book like the proverbial "red thread" - although Jenny Brosinski's illustrations tend more towards hues of green and brown, brightened up on several double pages by vivid accent colours. The metre of Wittkamp's rhymes is reminiscent of classic picture books such as "Die Häschenschule", and quickly enables even very small children to join in. The illustrations, for their part, go far beyond mere illumination of the text: they add a further dimension to it by creating a whole range of people and landscapes that don't appear in the actual text, but which could very readily exist in the margins. Right at the start of the "long way round", we meet in the town racing cyclists and cheering old men, sheep with avant-garde hairstyles, and horses on ice-skates. When we later leave the town, we encounter a group of polar bears, all surreptitously digging away in an escape attempt; praying sheep, and tightrope walkers balancing on the red thread that lasts for three double pages. Fortunately, Brosinski's illustrations are far removed from "cute". Rather, she gives children the chance to use their own imaginations and interpretative skills. Her pictures are full of unusual dimensions, crooked houses portrayed partly in cross-section like dolls' houses, and oddly proportioned people, and they often quote stories that are already familiar (to children): Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf are, for instance, lurking at the communal picnic.
When at the end of this truly long walk you finally discover a house with a beautifully made bed, you shut the book. And before you know it, you'll be fast asleep and dreaming your own sweet dreams!
Heike Friesel
December 2006
[Translated by Helena Ragg-Kirkby]
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