Continued from here...
VKBMKLs: You have a new children's book out,
Fog Island,
about Ireland. Can you tell us about it?
TOMI: In a way, it’s a very different book altogether. I
always have to do something different... I would say that about all my picture
books, most of them. I've done other books completely different... the romantic
trend, if you wanna put it that way. I just wanted to do a children’s book that
was not just actions and craziness, no social satire or anything... there’s
none of that in my new book. This book is really more about atmosphere and
emotions. Of course, I was heavily inspired by Ireland. Where we live, like the
stonework in there is exactly the kind of stonework we have here. I was able
finally to take my time to really develop my skies, you know, like not just any
skies... when I look at one of my skies in this book I feel home, because this
is my home. Ireland is my home. And we've been living here in Ireland for 35
years now, and I am thankful to the Irish people, to Ireland as a country, and
it’s my way of saying thank you. Very emotionally so, very emotionally so. I've
really found my place, my…how do you call this, my zuhause in German, my place
where I was able to settle.
VKBMKLs: You’ve lived all
over the world but settled in Ireland and stayed there. What is it about this
place that has kept you there as an artist?
TOMI: Well, it was after 30 years in New York, at least several
years in Canada while I wrote the book
Far Out Isn't Far Enough…I have to say too, I can say that I write
just about as much as I draw. This is mostly a written book, but the situation
there was really so…you have to read it. But my wife and I, we decided to
create a family. We came to Ireland. We fell in love with it. We didn't
question…we came back and she was eight months pregnant and we came back with
six suitcases and that was that. You know I always think that one has to give
destiny a destination, and when something presents itself, just take a chance.
Just do it. And it’s a challenge as well, as I said, how boring life would be
without challenge.
VKBMKLs: Being in the
business of vintage children’s books, I've noticed that people’s feelings
towards them are very much tied up in memory and loss. Do you have a particular
childhood book or image or memory that has haunted you?
TOMI: Well, too many, actually, too many. My father died when I
was three and a half. Then came the Nazis, then we had to move, then came the
actual war, which I mean we were in the last bridgehead for three months,
really surrounded in the middle of the battle fields, and then the French came
back. It was not really nice. And over all this, I’m very, very thankful for
all the things that happened to me because they shaped me and they shaped my
opinions which have stuck to me all my life. Frankly, we've seen enough war
to hate it. Not to hate it but to loathe it. I
hate hate. So all those elements
have definitely shaped me in every way, so I've done my autobiography in
several volumes, and one is
Tomi: A NaziChildhood. For four years, we were under the boots of the Nazis, but that’s another story.
I must say that nearly every one
of my children’s book is autobiographical. If the Mellopses went
spelunking it was because I did some spelunking, and I've always been really
taken with mineralogy and geology and so on. But if you take
Otto, this is
really about my experience in the war. And when I did
Otto, I didn't have to check
on how Sherman tanks looks, or an MG42. I know every weapon. I held them.
And my God, by the age of 14, me, my mother and sisters were to dig trenches,
can you imagine that? And then of course as I was saying before, like
No Kiss for Mother is totally
autobiographical. I could go on but I would have to take every book piece by
piece.
VKBMKLs: Is there one story you've always wanted to tell but haven’t come
around to yet?
TOMI: Too many. As you know,
especially all my latest books are really
engagée. Like
Allumette is about the third war.
Flix about cats and dogs, you know,
about hatred, about getting along.
Making Friends, about a little black boy coming into a white neighborhood.
Blue Cloud is about the civil war. It
goes on like this. I think the last one, which was
Zloty, really that’s just
about everything. But still... there’s still some books I would like to do, a
summation, really. I would like to do a book about hunger and thirst. I have a
story already but I haven’t got the ending, you see, that’s the problem. And
really some serious issues, I’m in the war, I've done prosecution, whatever, but
I think you cannot start early enough to give children awareness, awareness of
what hurts. What is bad is what hurts. And to be aware that this world is
pretty ugly, but that everybody stands a chance to make it. Everybody stands a
chance, they have been given a sense of endurance and courage, and curiosity, of
course.
But I really think I tried very hard because I've
been working with the French Ministry of Education, and I’m still in Europe in
council, but I must say that many of my efforts have remained fruitless. For
instance, we have a concentration camp in Alsace, still with the gas chambers
and all this, and I always say every teacher should take the children there, six or seven years old, to show them what a concentration camp was, or can be. And I've
been very active, just two years ago I did a poster for the teaching of the
show and it was a big Swastika and a general’s hand grabbing two Jewish
children. This poster was sent to every classroom in France. And to my
knowledge, not one teacher put up this poster because they would all say it was
an outrage. They would say, "We cannot terrify the little children!" But excuse
me. When a child at the age of six is being taken away to a concentration camp,
that is a reality and that’s more than scary. It’s even disgusting. People
avoid talking about those things, and this is a kind of cowardice right there,
and I don’t buy it. And I’m still fighting it, and I will fight it to the end
of the days, with my last line and my last drawings.
Our children were brought
up like this and when we are adults we can’t remember as children. I remember Luca,
my son, was seven years old, so I bought him a little piece of barb and I’d set
this barbed wire on the shelf, as a reminder. Children must be made
aware of what has happened and what can happen. That’s one thing that could
actually serve as a title to this interview. There’s one thing I can tell you
for sure—there’s no such thing as a sheltering sky.
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I picked up this latest book in a shop here last week, when I was looking for Crictor. I could'nt believe my eyes when I saw the currach, the stone walls and read the childrens names. A Tomi Ungerer book set in Ireland! I had heard that he lived here at some stage but it is an honour that this is where he calls home. Go raibh maith agat Tomi, for the wonderful stories.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this interview. Wonderful.
ReplyDelete