Do our children still live in the 1930s?

BY TAPANI RITAMÄKI

It is often said that children’s literature is the most socially aware genre of literature, but is it actually true? Arguments in favour include the fact that contemporary families of all kinds feature in children’s books: single mothers, single fathers, children alone. Furthermore, no subject is taboo any more, consider for instance Bajsboken (The book of poo), published some years ago by a Swedish publishing company. The book devoted a wealth of illustration to the differences in shape, size and colour of the turds produced by various animals including humans. The following year, the same publishing company published Dödenboken (The book of death), which deals with the things that happen to you after death. In an entertaining manner, the text explains to children that after they die, they may turn into a flower growing from the earth, or a tree, or perhaps a bird.
However, even if death, divorce and bowel movements are all comme il faut, there is still one subject which no children’s book – none of the ones I’ve come across anyway – has yet dared to broach. Consider this: innumerable children’s books contain pictures of houses and towns. The curious thing about them is that they all represent an architectural style which has not been actively used for the past 70 years. So although the text of children’s books is totally in touch with contemporary society, time has stood still in the illustrations, at least in the ones which actually feature buildings.
Let us look at some examples:
One of the most popular Swedish-language children’s books in Finland in recent years is called Vesta-Linnea och monstermamman (Vesta-Linnea and the monster mother; translated into Finnish, German, Norwegian and Danish). The book was written by Tove Appelgren and illustrated by Salla Savolainen. Most of the action is set at home, in the hall, bathroom or living room of a flat, but since the ‘monster mother’ wants to have her hair done, the characters also have to venture out of doors.
But which town are they in? The time is the present, but the town is full of 1930s Classical apartment houses in bright pastels with small-paned windows. This can hardly be Helsinki, because in Vallgård (Vallila), the area of Helsinki where this type of architecture predominates, the houses are generally much lower, but above all, the area is far less homogenous in terms of architecture. This is due to the unfortunate effects of the eagerness for urban renewal in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, when many old buildings were sadly demolished; the result is clearly evident everywhere in Helsinki, including Vallgård.
The works of another Swedish-speaking Finnish children’s writer also feature an unbroken architectural idyll. Carina Wolff-Brandt’s books about the Johansson family have been illustrated by Thomas Lindberg, and the fictional rural setting, called Rukubacka, is an untouched district of detached houses, consisting entirely of houses from the same period as the buildings in Appelgren & Savolainen’s work, the 20s and 30s.
Raija Siekkinen’s book Utelias fauni (The curious faun), illustrated by Hannu Taina, also features a 1930s Classicist townscape. In the book Aasi, Morso ja Mauri Mourunen (The donkey, Morso and Mauri Mourunen) by Tuula Kallioniemi and Riikka Juvonen, Mauri the stray cat finds a home with the donkey and Morso in their little 1930s cottage. Meanwhile, in Hullu hajusuola (The silly smelling salts) by Pekka Vuori, the characters repaint the – you guessed it – 1930s Classical school house in wild colours. The only other building shown in this book is a prison, which is also in a 1930s style.
The buildings in children’s books from Sweden are no different. In the book Mimmi får en farfar (Mimmi gets a granddad) by Viveca Sundvall and illustrator Eva Eriksson, the main characters, Roberta Karlsson and Mimmi, run about in a town that looks like a 1930s picture postcard (except that the shop signs say things like ‘Boutique’). In Barbro Lindgren’s Rosa på dagis (Rosa goes to the daycare centre), the story of a shy dog who finally makes new friends at the dogs’ daycare centre, there are a couple of illustrations of town skylines: one is clearly 1930s style and the other is a line of houses with gable ends lined up along the street in the Hanseatic style. In the book Ängeln Gunnar dimper ner (Gunnar the Angel falls to earth; text by Barbro Lindgren and illustrations by Charlotte Ramel), old Mr Pettersson lives in a lovely little cottage with delightful small-paned windows in 1930s style. The main characters in Eva Lindström’s Hasse och Rune på semester (Hasse and Rune go on holiday) have a cottage just like it, and so do Sven Nordqvist’s well-loved main characters Festus and his cat Mercury (or Pettson and the cat Findus, as they are called in the original Swedish).
The list of examples could go on and on. Richard Scarry’s London does not feature buildings by Sir Norman Foster or other contemporary architects. Lucy Cousins’s main character, Maisy, never goes to visit an estate with concrete tower blocks.
What does it all mean? After all, we know full well that the world outside children’s books consists predominantly of contemporary concrete architecture. In Finland, for instance, only some five per cent of the buildings date back to the pre-war era, and the proportion of contemporary buildings is among the highest in Europe. Despite this, post-war buildings are almost never seen in Finnish children’s books. This is even more surprising in view of the fact that urban Finland has big suburban estates of concrete blocks built in the 60s and 70s, while almost every small town and village consists mainly of contemporary square buildings with flat roofs. The situation is not quite so bad in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, or England… but there, too, houses have certainly been built since the 1930s.
Why is this nowhere in evidence in children’s literature? It can hardly be a conscious choice by the illustrators, and it seems more likely that they are, in fact, recreating some kind of imaginary ideal, a deeply rooted idyll, but a subconscious one. It follows that our ideal house (in a western European context) is a house type that is no longer built. The fact that the houses of children’s books represent 1930s Classicism in style rather than Baroque, Neo-Gothicism or 19th-century Neo-Classicism is probably tied to the fact that this is a house type with a degree of architectural detail, but detail which lends itself to being used in a certain type of illustration: pitched roofs with chimneys and attic windows, white window frames and small-paned windows. Other older architectural styles tend to incorporate complex detail such as caryatids and other ornamentation which is difficult to render in a relatively stylized drawing.
Having said all this, I have actually found a couple of examples of contemporary townscapes in my research. In Hetki lyö, Risto Räppääjä (The time has come, Risto Rapper) by Sinikka and Tiina Nopola, a small group of people have gathered round Risto as he searches for a wedding ring in a manhole in the street. The backdrop of the scene is a 1960s prefab concrete block. The illustrator of Är du feg, Alfons Åberg? (Are you a coward, Alfons Åberg?) by Gunilla Bergström has also had the audacity to include a picture of contemporary architecture. In one of the pictures, some boys are having a fist-fight while others stand nearby and laugh. Behind a grey wall in the background, there are three gloomy concrete and glass blocks with strip windows.
What conclusion is one to draw from that? That concrete breeds violence? What if that is actually true? Then again, what if children’s book illustrations could finally catch up with the reality that the text has evidently embraced such a long time ago?
Another alternative would be for architects to start modelling their designs on the houses found in children’s literature.

Translated by The English Centre/Monica Sonck and Nicholas Mayow