The classic children’s book “About the little mole who wanted to know who had hit his head” serves as a compass for parents around the world on a highly explosive topic. The author Wolf Erlbruch has died in Wuppertal at the age of 74.
The German children’s book illustrator, author and university teacher Wolf Erlbruch is dead. This has been confirmed by Hanser Verlag in a statement. Accordingly, Erlbruch died on December 11 in his birthplace of Wuppertal at the age of 74. He was best known for his work “The Little Mole Who Wanted to Know Who Kicked His Head” (1989). The bestseller deals with the excrements of various animals, where the mole gets a crash course in excrement knowledge. Only at the end does he find the real culprit with the help of bluebottles. In Wuppertal, the classic was performed as an opera suitable for children in the 2021/22 season. The book was translated into 27 different languages ??and reached a worldwide circulation of more than three million copies.
To date, Erlbruch has published around 30 books, including “Das Hexeneinmaleins” (1998) based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and “Ente, Tod und Tulpe” (2007). He also illustrated books based on texts by Rafik Schami (“That’s Not a Parrot”), Mirjam Pressler and Yaakov Shabtai, and James Joyce. The publisher writes about his death: “With him we are losing an artist with an unmistakable visual language who, not only as an outstanding draftsman, but above all as an innovative designer and illustrator, through his unusual handling of technology and image material, has been a style-defining factor for every generation to this day.”
Erlbruch was born in 1948. From 1967 to 1974 he studied drawing at the Folkwang Hochschule für Gestaltung in Essen. He then made a name for himself as an illustrator in the advertising industry. In the 1980s he began to illustrate and write children’s books. His first book “The Eagle That Didn’t Want to Fly” was published in 1985. From the 1990s he also taught at various universities in Düsseldorf, Wuppertal and Essen.
Erlbruch has received several prizes in his long career, including the German Youth Literature Prize twice (1993 and 2003) and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize (2017). His son Leonhard Erlbruch is also a children’s book author. Together with his father he designed various books and calendars.
