Knowing Nothing, Understanding Everything: Meet four creatives known for their work for kids

“I am not a children’s illustrator,” asserts Hervé Tullet, arguably one of the most experimental and progressive masters of the medium to emerge from the last two decades. “I’m a children’s illustrator also, but an illustrator first – I’ve done illustrations for magazines, advertising, all sorts of stuff. Now I feel I’m someone who conceives of children’s books, who sets them up. But I’m not a children’s illustrator.” Katja Spitzer feels the same; “I’ve never wanted to be a children’s illustrator and I don’t consider myself a specialist. I make work for all sorts of different purposes. Like for adults as well.” It’s an issue that crops up with all four of the practitioners I speak to for this article; Hervé Tullet, Katja Spitzer, Jürg Lindenburger and Maggie Li. Having approached them for their engaging and unique contribution to the field I discover that none of them want to be pigeonholed by a term they feel is pejorative, overly prescriptive and limits the way that other areas of the industry perceive them. Either that or they insist they slipped into making kids’ books quite by accident. “Illustration was always something I wanted to do as a kid,” says Jürg. Since April 2014 he’s been chief illustrator for London-based kids’ magazine Anorak, creating covers for their books and magazines and illustrating their regular features. “When I was really young I always thought it would be so cool to do that with my life, but I never thought it would be a possible career. Later on when I did manage to make a living out of it the style of work I was producing didn’t really apply to anything other than kids stuff. Lots of clients would tell me that everything was too childish for them. So I think I just naturally fell into this.” Maggie Li tells a similar story. “It’s funny because when you first emailed my initial reaction was ‘Oh shit, it’s children’s stuff!’ but it’s just something I fell into. When you do an illustration degree there’s always a standard children’s module where you have to come up with a story, illustrate it and send it to a publisher. Mine was rubbish and I really didn’t want to do it, but other people were really good at coming up with stories and making picture books. One of the main frustrations with the children’s book industry is the lack of will shown by publishers to experiment with what they produce. Books are made to appeal broadly to a stereotypical idea of childish interests and to deal with subjects that kids’ parents will feel comfortable with. “They think they know what children want or are supposed to want,” says Hervé, “and they just give them what they’re supposed to need.” Maggie concurs; “British children’s book publishing is frustrating because it’s really limiting in terms of what they accept. They want conventional ideas and for everything to have a happy ending. Parents don’t want to give their children a book about death because they’re supposed to be protecting them and not exposing them to things like that. But ultimately it means a lot of interesting books don’t get published and you shy away from subjects that have the potential to offend. “If you compare books that get published in France or Germany they’re much more adventurous and interesting. Duck, Death and the Tulip is a German book that deals with death in a really interesting way but nobody took it on here because of the colour palettes, the subject; it was just really subdued. Even if a small publisher will release it places like Waterstones won’t take it, the supermarkets won’t take it, and they pretty much dictate everything in terms of what’s published.” Hervé Tullet worked in advertising for over 12 years before becoming an illustrator. Tired by the lack of creative freedom in his work he traded ad-land for a freelance career and has never once looked back. As a native Frenchman he acknowledges the rich history of illustrated books in Europe, but insists that producing great work still depends on finding the right kind of publisher. “I was very lucky because from the start I met fantastic publishers, and this is a very important part of making things work. I met people who made me feel free to think and didn’t have a specific idea about what a book for children should be. More than that, they were conscious of the fact that a book for a child could be something totally new; something that had never existed before and could be all about experimentation.” When his first book launched in France Hervé achieved immediate success, but finding a publisher overseas proved difficult. “Bookshops would say my work was too French and that it wouldn’t work for a UK audience. When I did finally find a publisher it was a small one called Milet and for a year it didn’t sell. It wasn’t until the Tate opened and the bookshop bought some of them that it started to do well. Then they bought more and more and it started to do really well. But at the beginning the market was closed to new authors like me.” This closed-mindedn