Report from the Clover

By : Steffen Larsen

If Søren Jessen had been a car, then he would probably be one of those ornate bu-ses teeming with people, both inside and out. Splendid and amazingly dependable. And a bus that drives around to the most extraordinary places. Søren Jessen’s bus has an extensive and varied seating capacity.

Søren Jessen is, of course, not a bus, but he is a kind of omnibus. He has a go at (and does) just about everything. And he is part of a trend in which it has become more common for illustrators to turn their hand to writing. The opposite is not so common.

Other illustrators who have ‘crossed over’ include Hanne Kvist and Dorte Karrebæk – but they are not on the same ornate journey as Søren Jessen, who seems to want to embrace everything. He started out as an illustrator. He can draw in every style from Disney to the totally surreal. And Søren Jessen has written a number of serious books for older children – and even more books in the fun, giggly genre.

Den store månefest (The Big Moon Festival) is a charming little story from the galaxies. Far, far away, in the twinkling zone, the author finds a planet where they know how to have a nice time. They’re an odd bunch, the inhabitants of Clover, a village in a valley of the same name. There’s the long-snouted pig, Nuffer, who collects ties, and then there’s a ballerina who walks on point, and the Raffeborough family and, in the tower, Scatty, who is as clever as Gyro Gearloose.

And then they celebrate the moon festival – for which they are allowed to dress up. Nuffer daydreams himself into being a creature with pale skin and five fingers and a very small snout. Maybe there really are some creatures like that somewhere in the universe?

There is a tone of collusion to the story that makes it add up to something more than high jinks. We’re all in this together! It’s the same technique used by Icelandic Thorvaldor Thorsteinsson in his sympathetic and very poetic books about Flying-Finn. Søren Jessen is not so gentle. There are too many colours and too much (horse)power bursting to get out, so the vision puts the content somewhat in the shade.

But he holds the road well! And he has, with great aplomb, sprinkled Den store månefest with a number of rather tart illustrations of life in Clover – in colour.


This article first appeared in Politiken newspaper, 12.10.2002.

Translated by Gaye Kynoch