Floundering?!

Illustration & text: Daniela Leidig
Floundering?!
Book design: Suse Kopp

Moritz writes “school” in tiny scribbles, and “BLUE” in giant letters because that’s what they look like to him from his spot in the tree. In art class, he draws flowers growing out of the black lines on his coloring pictures because he knows they’re headed for the light. “That’s no good”, his teachers say. Luckily, a girl named Lana helps him tie his shoelaces and becomes his best friend. As well as the little flounder that has no room to dance in its tiny fish tank. When the science teacher asks Moritz to make an accurate drawing of the flounder, a miracle happens…

Daniela Ludwig’s picture book takes the perspective of a child who has trouble adjusting to the expectations of the school system and the adult world. In dreamy pictures and short sentences, she tells us how creativity can be used to overcome seemingly rigid boundaries.

Daniela Leidig: “When my son started school, he drew a giant poster of the alphabet featuring 26 animals that were giving me mischievous looks, their eyes invariably growing on one side of their faces. In the flounder’s case, this looked perfectly normal. Many of my children’s colored pencil drawings make their way into my watercolors – and this was one of them. I digitally add details and collage-like cutouts of photographed surfaces and pictures. One thing you will often find in them is the type of lines you see in school notebooks being intercepted by random transitions and wild doodles. To me, this is a way of confronting predefined structures with playfulness.”

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