Dina Gellert is very much aware of her target group. Her many
picture books and storybooks for small children are characterised by a unique
simplicity. With few lines and few artistic effects she is able to convey
feelings and thoughts in such a way that the children are in no doubt as to
what is being expressed to them. Her use of wax crayons provides a surprising
tenderness and intimacy, and Gellert rarely goes in for changes in perspective
in her drawings when addressing this target group. This gives a calm,
continuous story that leaves room for the children’s imagination and gives them
scope to talk about the actual action.
Simplicity is also the hallmark of the text in the pocket books Dina
Gellert has written. Her 1994 debut, Den
dag Leopold blev ond (The Day Leopold Became Bad), was followed up seven
years and 53 books later with Den dag,
Leopold blev bange (The Day Leopold Became Afraid). These books provide the
children with a good mechanism with which to see the relationship between
feelings and actions, something that is not always easy to explain. Despite the pedagogical aim, the humour is what is most distinctive in these and most of her other books.
Her books for older children are also worth worthy of note: the two
books on Sindbad the Sailor, and not least her illustrations for Vibeke Stybe’s excellent
retelling of Holberg’s classic Niels
Klims Underjordiske Rejse (Niels Klim’s Subterranean Journey). In these, we
see an artist who can use her gifts for other purposes than speaking directly
to the smallest children by virtue of lines and wax crayons. In the books about
Sindbad the Sailor, which Gellert retells from the Thousand and One Nights, she
can illustrate a fearful giant side by side with more comic and grotesque
figures reminiscent of some of the classic characters from the early days of
strip cartoons. With heavy, dense colours the ground of which changes from page
to page, we get alongside Sindbad the Sailor and Byen på søens bund
(The City at the Bottom of the Sea) books that
have an almost assertive effect with all their colours. This is really stuff
for the children’s eyes. And just as we thought we knew her style, came the
incomparable story of Niels Klim’s Subterranean Journey from 1741. Holberg’s
story, actually a counter to pietism and its intolerance, is about Niels Klim
from Bergen who falls down a hole into the hollow centre of the earth, where he
finds a number of states that reminiscent of those on the surface. Dina
Gellert’s illustrations to the text extend over a wide field, from some
containing a clear inspiration from of Dali to others embodying elements from
strip cartoons in which she can play recklessly with the perspectives. In
contrast to her other books she has here been sparing of colour effects and
instead made use of a clear, pure line based on watercolours.
There is every reason to keep an eye on Dina Gellert: As an author, she can write clear little
stories, and as an illustrator she is an artist in a constant process of
development and with a sense for the children’s love for the at once
over-exposed, the intimate and the colourful.
