My World is a Poem

Illustration: Martina Walther
Text: Heike Nieder

My World is a Poem

Book design: Theres Jörger & André Meier

What would you like to do, if you weren’t too scared? – Ride a dragon. (Lea, 5 years old, Copenhagen / Denmark)

Dragon Crash Limerick

The Botanical Garden is his home
I mount him, we’re speeding towards the dome
I try to go left but he keeps going straight
The dome of the greenhouse in front of us, wait!
Crash boom! It comes down. An expensive poem!

Heike Nieder wrote these poems based on her interviews with children in different countries. Like their answers, these poems are about adventures, fears, dreams, hopes, and favorite fragrances. They are often funny, sometimes thoughtful, and always touchingly honest. Mathina Walther’s illustrations are always close to the kids and their viewpoints – some alike, and some completely different, regardless of where they’re from.

Martina Walther:
»Heike‘s poems introduce the different worlds embodied by different children – this means every illustration is a different world, too. In some cases I’ve created close-ups showing details like a child’s face and focusing mostly on his emotions, other times I took a few steps back and ended up showing the child as part of her surroundings. I tried to capture small, fleeting moments of poetry. To me, architecture, rooms, furniture, colors, places outside, and my own childhood memories played an important part in it. Staying away from digital painting, I used goache and colored pens, complemented by a few collage-like paper cut-outs and tin foil from ice cream or chocolate wrappers.«

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