“Huller about noise in the savannah” by Anne Derente

This is a review. The author is responsible for the opinions in the text.

The fact that the story of the book does not exist without the reader is a statement that, not least, makes the child as an audience an important person when reading aloud. The child has to be there, otherwise the story won’t tell much. The picture book in particular picks up on this and makes it part of the plot. David Sundin’s “The Book That Didn’t Want to Be Read” is a recent example, in which the book must be both turned over and upside down in order to carry out the action recommended in the text. If the reader should win and not the book that no reader wants to encounter.

In Sundin’s case, it’s the idea that’s funny, and the graphic form makes the whole thing worth reading. But there is no other underlying theme. It’s not like the prime example of Anna-Clara Tidholm’s “Knock,” where the child is asked to knock on the page presented as a door in order to progress in a story that features not only that activity but also a journey through various locations. Things happen and characters encounter the child in different ways at the same time, depending on their age and ability to perceive the place and the people.

“Huller about the noise in the savannah” was created by Anne Derenne, a French cartoonist based in Madrid. The motif is the African savannah, and in other words it is a book with a background in several cultures and languages, translated by Caroline Bruse and published by Alfabeta. This is usually pleasing when the English or even Swedish edition is questioned. It is also a book that precisely demands its reader and their active presence.

Peaceful silence reigns over the savannah before the big elephant thunders past and turns everything upside down. “Shake the Book” prompts the text so that all the animals will be made right at the end. And so it goes, spread by spread, until all the animals are in the same place as in the opening image.

The text conveys the avoidance of “noisy chatter”. Not much else. Derenne’s book is more similar to David Sundin’s than Tidholm’s in that there is not much more beyond the first idea of ​​how to activate the reader. There is also a lack of originality, which is what “The Book That Didn’t Want to Be Read” creates, a graphic expression that tempts you to do what the text wants. Here the animals are shown flat and expressionless and the only thing you can read from their appearance is surprise or horror at being exposed to this “noise”.

Perhaps it is this expression that the audience takes away with them, the funny “louder”. Unfortunately, it’s not much more.

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