Joshua is aware of the Sunny side of life, but the young summer, gold chicken is well-aware of the risks. “The sun here in the South was to be getting hotter day by day and would soon be so strong that the spring dress fire started.” So the flight back over the Alps, to the summer quarters in the climatically milder middle of Europe, but the small Bird is delaying his departure due to the warmth a little longer. As he takes off and finally, are all the other way, and so, Joshua is on the long journey alone.
Andreas platthaus
editor responsible for the literature and literary life.
F. A. Z.
Where an image flows book story that starts like that? You could, as some imagine: in an allegory on climate change, in an adventure story, in the invocation of mutual aid, in the warning against the disregard of traditions, in the self-assertion in the face of adverse circumstances, in a critique of laziness. Everything is already there in the literature, the historically long series of animal fables, the my, of course, the truth is always us humans. But what Inka Pabst as written and Mehrdad has illustrated Zaeri, is something New, because they lead to your summer gold chicken on a journey from the bright sun of the South into the depth of Black – and- quite literally-namely in the Form of three consecutive dark double pages after Joshua got through the mountains in a storm and passed out. “When he woke up again, he didn’t know where he was.” Then Joshua hears voices. And Music.
picture books don’t do well with music, but Mehrdad Zaeri, born in Iran, but since 1984, in Germany, has found an impressive solution for Joshua’s perception. After the darkness of the Illustrator allows for three light and bright double pages, on which initially the guitar only in a rear view of the drawn man, a faceless woman is looking at the how of children’s hand-drawn flock of birds escapes, then a Mobile with animal figures, and finally again as the artful toddler scrawl appears to be a scene of some lively stick figure winter pleasures. What happened in this book? How did we get from the existence of a bird in the human family? And then why are we in the final part of the picture book with the little bird on the move?
No words
Inka Pabst has written three years ago, “When grandma was getting smaller and smaller,” a book about death, a child is told and of the Zaeri illustrated held, however, in contrast to around the night’s dark swoon sequence almost color, even “Joshua” at the time, consistently in barren pencil grey. Now both of them have again created a book about Dying – a complementary work to the previous by the fact that it is not this time to the death of a very old, but very young people. Because what belongs to Joshua in the Dark as the voices returned him to consciousness, are those of a Elternpaars, the loss of the Baby.
