Niklas Bengtsson: Promoting children's books by exhibitions

Transcription

1 Niklas Bengtsson: Promoting children's books by exhibitions Traditional book exhibitions are based on the works of authors and illustrators. Very often these kind of book exhibitions are constructed on all published works by one single author. Another way is to promote illustrators work by exhibitions. Both types of exhibition are difficult, if we think about publicity. Newspapers might not find these kind of exhibitions interesting enough for their readers. There should be something extra to evoke the interest of cultural journalists, who usually don't follow the field of children's literature. Visually interesting exhibitions can be made from the works of world famous artists. And by artists I don't this time mean illustrators. I mean painters and sculptors whose work can be seen in galleries and art museums. For example, if Yayoi Kusama's illustration (2012) for Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures in wonderland is chosen into a children's book exhibition it will probably bring new adult audience for the exhibition. And the art critics should be interested in the exhibition too. For children this kind of valuating is often pointless. Either they like artist's works or not, when they see them, but when parents and grandparents are interested, there will be a wider child audience too. So there is a reason to court adults favour, when a children's book exhibition is planned. Traditional book exhibitions can be problematic. If the books are inside a locked bookcase, visitors are annoyed at the situation where they can only see the books but they cannot read and leaf through the books. On the other hand, some visitors might be disappointed if the books are placed on open shelves or tables, from where they may be freely 'borrowed': after a couple of weeks there might not be very many books left. Such problems can be avoided by making a both-and (instead of an either -or) exhibition. One part of the exhibition can be placed in closed glass cabinets and the other part can be freely leafed through on a nearby table. These parts can of course operate as totally independent exhibitions. To maximise the publicity for exhibitions is hard work. The media are usually not interested in exhibitions that come around every year, as this may seem a tired and uninteresting format for 1

2 them. For the average cultural journalist, a children's book exhibition unfortunately doesn't sound like a media-sexy event. However, there are different ways to attract journalists' attention. If famous authors or illustrators are speaking about their work during the exhibition, this may guarantee at least some publicity. But a children's book exhibition can achieve publicity on its own merits also. If the exhibition is put together in an unconventional way the media will be interested in it. Therefore, I am not talking only about exhibitions based on the idea of the text or illustration: you don't have to look books only as literature or illustrated literature. Books can and should also be presented as extraordinary objects. For example, an exhibition featuring books such as Katsumi Komagata's sophisticated and curiously folded Japanese picture books, Robert Sabuda's excellent pop-up books, Enzo Mari's puzzle book The Fable Game (1965) or Danish Joh. Th. Lundbye's book scroll Rejse i billeder (originally drawn in but printed and hand coloured in 1941) can be a source of great interest. Many so-called 'toy books' are kitsch, but there are still many possibilities for high-quality exhibitions concerning book design. I think that we don't pay enough attention on the material elements of children's books. Design, material, shape, structure, size, folding system and bounding of the book are all questions that can be subjects for extraordinary book exhibitions. Sometimes old and new forms of book are connected. For instance Chinese educational Three- Character Primer by Wang Yinglin from Song Dynasty, has been produced in our time as laser engraved text into bamboo slips which are tied together with silk rope. It combines traditional Chinese culture and modern technology but for many people not familiar with Chinese culture it is an extraordinary book object and thus an excellent starting point for an exhibition. Books like Three-Character Primer can easily be connected with books scrolls and leporellos that are sometimes called in English also as oriental fold books. This kind of books open up into a long publication. The physical length of the books might be worth of wondering. Especially 2

3 children are interested how rather small books turn into bigger objects. Metamorphoses are always somewhat like miracles. One way to categorize books as physical objects is the binding: are books bound or not? Traditional western codex is bound, but oriental fold books and scroll books are not bound. An exhibition can tell about the differences between the structures of different types of books. I once made an exhibition about unbound or not-bound books. Mainly there were portfolios and decks of playing cards but also other forms of books. The border of books and playing cards is interesting. Some playing cards for children can also be counted as books. Especially playing cards teaching alphabets can be defined as ABC-books. On the other hand, playing cards are important for children's literature because they promote fairy tales, world classics and national classics of children's literature. Especially in Sweden there is a strong tradition to illustrate playing cards with the characters of children's literature. One way to build an exhibition could be concentrating on the folding and binding system of the book. An excellent exhibition can easily be arranged from pop-up books only. They fascinate not just children but also adults. It is amazing how nearly a two dimensional paper sheet grows into a three dimensional object when the book is opened. Rather many of the world classics have also been made in pop-up editions, which gives the possibility to mix traditionally bound and folded books and pop-up books into same exhibition. Usually books at least western codexes are somewhat square objects. However, there still are lots of triangular, heart shaped and round books not to mention all the other wired forms of children's literature which can bring joy for the readers and for the audience at an exhibition. The history of this kind of books is not short. For instance heart shaped books has been produced since the 15 th century. A heart shaped book of love lyrics was written by cleric Jean de Montchena in One way to evoke children's interest is to concentrate on the size of the book. Miniature books offer excellent possibilities to make small scale exhibitions. They can also be connected to other 3

4 forms of art than just literature and illustration. Flip books, which have strong printing tradition for example in Hong Kong, are close to movies and they can be used as a starting point for children to make their own cartoons or movies. If possible, it would be reasonable to arrange workshops for children during the book exhibition. Workshops elaborate the message of the exhibition. And they will arise wider interest for the exhibition. Learning by doing is usually more effective then just learning by watching and reading. Therefore, if children will design and draw their own flip books, they will learn different things. It is not just a question of how to draw different things. By creating their own flip books, children learn to understand what is a story and how is it constructed. And last but not least: children will get a book that they have made personally for themselves. Hopefully this will encourage children to love book as an object and thus they will find their way to the world of picture books, illustrated books, comics, short stories and novels. Even though flip books are funny, they can be a bit educational like Kim Jeong Ah's Happy New Year published by The National Folk Museum of Korea (2006). In this flip book a young girl learns to dress up a traditional Korean folk dress. Unfortunately children's non-fiction does not seem to achieve as much publicity as children's fiction. Maybe there is a reason to build an exhibition concentrating on children's non-fiction? As a first thought one might think that the structure of a flip book cannot be varied, but for example Japanese Christmas Comes Along (Seigensha Art Publishing 2011) shows that also a special sound is possible to connect to a flip book. It seems that several animated movies have been worked out into flip books in Japan. Is it possible to make an exhibition about emptiness? Yes, a charming idea is to base an exhibition on immaterialism in children's books. Holes in picture books is a lovely subject for an exhibition which could contain for example Tove Jansson's classic Finnish picture book Moomin, Mymble and Little My from Jansson was awarded with Hans Christian Andersen medal in

5 Personally I have exhibited children's books as designed objects in several cities in Finland and Åland Islands since For instance, for International Children's Book Day (ICBD) 2008 I set up an exhibition of pop-up books in the cultural centre of the city of Vantaa in southern Finland. The nearby library was inspired by the idea of ICBD and put together an exhibition of books by H. C. Andersen; they even started a joint programme with the nearby kindergarten. Thus book exhibitions can also lead into the way of knowing your neighbours. A big reason why I have made exhibitions to the city called Vantaa, even though I live in Helsinki, is publicity. I am living in the capital of Finland, which means that there is always too much going on and therefore it is difficult to get information about children's literature on the newspapers of my home town. Vantaa is a bit smaller town than Helsinki: their local newspaper has written every year about my exhibitions. I do think, that each exhibition should get both wide audience and good publicity. Audience and publicity are of course related to each other. One way of maximising publicity is to use news agencies. Short press releases might not arouse much interest, but articles about the exhibition, presented in such way that they are connected to different on going public conversations might easily get published in several newspapers. It is not easy to evaluate the success of an article distributed through a news agency. The bare number of articles published in newspapers is not the only relevant fact. Even those papers that don't publish the article will get information about the exhibition. And they might write their own articles about the exhibition. Mainly I have tried to build my exhibitions of unconventional books in Spring so that they celebrate International Children's Book Day. I hope that my presentation gave at least some new ideas for promoting International Children's Book Day or other events in the field of children's culture. 5