Bus

Christina Röckl
Bus

Silent Book
Ages 3 +

A bus runs day in, day out. The atmosphere is tense. But then …

It is a morning like any other. You wake up, leave the house, go to the bus stop, get into the bus. For some reason, all the other passengers’ faces look grim or even angry. Rain. Wet. Oh well. And then you feel somebody nudging you. “Isn’t this a beautiful day?” Accompanied by a broad grin. You’re baffled. Briefly. One, two, three. And then you smile back. Your smile persists. You smile and wish the lady in the green and pink fleece jacket a good morning. She looks dumbfounded. One, two, three.

Christina Röckl, winner of the German Award for Youth Literature, recounts a day inside a bus, using a blaze of colours. Almost completely without words, she indicates the small things that can make the world dance –showing us how much we may accomplish with one tiny impulse – just a simple smile.

Christina Röckl: “In my work, I follow my intuition and leave a lot of leeway for the development of a picture book. Once I have drawn the storyboard with thumb-sized page sketches, I embark on the large originals. They evolve step by step and in the process of creation, they develop a life of their own with all their details. The bus posed a new challenge for me: As the book almost completely foregoes words while both side structures and characters are in constant repetition, I needed an exact plan for the storyboard. I kept changing small nuances until the bus started to actually roll. Then I drew every image and character parallelly, detail by detail. Almost in a state of meditation.”

Look inside