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  • Rotraut Susanne BernerGermany ★ Illustrator
  • Lydia Kokkola

“The reading of pictures is not only not cultivated but also even driven out of children.”

Rotraut Susanne Berner

Rotraut Susanne Berner was born in Stuttgart in 1948. She completed her formal education in graphic design at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. Before entering the field of children’s illustration, Berner worked for several years in publisher advertising, and has been a freelance graphic artist and illustrator since 1977. Berner is a prolific illustrator who has illustrated over 80 children’s books, some of which she has also written, and designed approximately 800 book covers.

Berner’s illustrative style combines a number of different techniques and materials. Delicate pen and ink outlines are her most consistent element, but she also uses brushes to spread colors, lino cuts, and stamps. She has also used the rare technique of flat screen printing, in which she draws directly onto the film so that the original is produced only after printing. Occasionally she will exaggerate the borders of an illustration to form a picture plate, but more commonly her figures appear with only the slightest indications of the setting. These lightly indicated backdrops may be tilted or the perspective may be skewed to create the impression that the figures are in movement. Her characters dance, the houses float, the whole world is in motion.

Berner’s illustrations are typically composed of a collection of small images which encourage the child to pause and seek out the details. Her popular “Wimmel” books, which depict human life in the four seasons of the year, contain numerous hidden objects for the young child to find. In this way, Berner attempts to address what she regards as a major problem in childhood education: the lack of attention paid to picture reading skills. As she explains, “The picture is a symbol for the little savage, the child that can’t yet read. And so that it surmounts this state as soon as possible, the reading of pictures is not only not cultivated but also even driven out of children. It is drummed into their heads that the text is the be-all and end-all.

The majority of Berner’s work is illustrations of texts by other people including Sylvia Plath, Gudrun Mebs, Bart Moeyaert and Jürg Schubiger. She has also illustrated collections of poetry, such as Dunkel war’s, der Mond schien helle [It was Dark Outside, the Moon Shone Bright] where her pictures form the unifying link that connects the poetry of very different poets. She has also written her own texts, such as Karlchen-Geschichten [Stories of Little Charly], as well as alphabet books, and retellings of fairy tales.

Selected Publications

Als die Welt noch Jung War [When the World was New]. Text Jürg Schubiger. Basel: Beltz & Gelberg, 1995. Print.
Dunkel War’s der Mond Schien Helle [It was Dark Outside, the Moon was Bright]. Ed. Edmund Jacoby. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1999. Print.
Die Prinzessin Kommt und Vier [The Princess Arrives at Four]. Text Wolfdietrich Schnurre. Berlin: Aufblau Verlag, 2000. Print.
Karlchen-Geschichten [Stories of Little Charlie]. Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003. Print.
Frühlings-Wimmelbuch [Spring Wimmel-book]. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 2004. Print. [End Page 27]
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