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Self-Discovery through Writing
"No Pretty Pictures" is a collection of remembrances from my childhood years spent during the Nazi occupation of Poland, followed with
a rather compressed summary of the beginning of normal, civilized life in Sweden after the war. It was there I really began to read books and go to school and to the theatre and movies and musical events. Since
those days, I have spent a professional lifetime making pictures. I have always trusted that what I have become is an accumulation of what I have learned.
Working on pictures for books and writing some of their texts myself, my work has circled around the shaping of sublime and idealized artifice.
Artifice illuminates and heightens the "real". Opera and theatre and dance do that. Picture books' texts are little theatre scenarios that need scenery and costumes and staging. Their spare words
suggest rather than describe, meeting the pictures halfway.
For many years, not consistently but in spurts, I have filled pages of notebooks with writing. These musings on pleasant or sad or absurd
events, thoughts on travel, disappointments and longings were never intended for publication. But I cannot fool myself into believing that the desire to take pen in hand and talk to a page is truly a private
matter. The very act of scribbling, signals the presumption that every nook and cranny of the store room of ones private life is of overwhelming interest to someone. I can always hear my voice speaking out loud
in my head. (I am a theatre person and I can't help picturing an audience.)
In "No Pretty Pictures" for the first time working solely with words not intended for a picture book, revealing myself, regurgitating
on the page my old story was exhilarating and, yes, knowing that this might actually be on its way to a reading public, a little embarrassing.
When a sizable stack of a manuscript had grown I presented it to my publisher. At that point several pieces in the manuscript were written from
my current viewpoint as a person who has lived a life far away but never without the presence of those old recollections. Much material that was written in the older, wiser voice was compressed and reserved for
the prologue and epilogue.
How did I remember so much from so long ago? The process of writing in itself became a tool for memory. Some of the short, almost clipped
sentences are directly influenced by my work in picture books. I had never intended to illustrate the book. What could I possibly paint or draw to illuminate my story that a late 20th Century reader cannot
supply by looking at existing war photographs and concentration camp newsreels?
When I was little I spoke Polish, which I understand still, but no longer speak well. When I was a teenager I spoke Swedish, a language I love,
still speak and often read. Sometimes, while writing, my thoughts would make a somersault into these languages. And the remembered phrase from a long time ago would inform and illuminate the thought in written
English. I wrote the book in my young voice. Not to manufacture a "young" book, but rather to make live on the page the frightening and confusing faraway events which happened to the little girl I was,
Long before I became aware of larger implications of world history.
Many people, after reading "No Pretty Pictures" ask whether it was painful to dredge up these awful experiences. I have to confess
that I became involved in the shaping and manipulating of the text in English, the language that has forever separated and liberated me from those years of physical and mental exile. In the telling, whatever
pain the dredging up of memories might have caused, lifted and blew away. •
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About the Author:
Anita Lobel's interests in theater and music and languages have served her well in her work both as an author and illustrator. Among the
distinguished picture books she has illustrated are This Quiet Lady by Charlotte Zolotow, Princess Furball and Toads and Diamonds by Charlotte Huck and Mangaboom by Charlotte Pomerantz. Her own books include
Away from Home, Alison's Zinnia, Sven's Bridge, and The Dwarf Giant, the art for which was inspired by Japanese theater.
Anita Lobel was awarded a Caldecott Honor in 1982 for On Market Street. She lives in New York City.
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
Meet the Author/Illustrator Archives
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