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| Bloc #4: Questions and enigmas in picture books | | October 2009 |  It is said that intelligence abides more in the question than in the answer and that indiscretion is morebefitting of the latter than the former. The ultimate function of literature, including children’sliterature, is closer to posing questions to the reader, confronting him with the mysteries of life, rather than providing him with answers and certainties. Thus the reader is obliged to look for his own answers or if he doesn’t find them, to make them up, or to create those surrogates which enable him to make his way through uncertainty with the minimum steadiness required to escape from desperation. And this mostly happens at the expense of the intentions of the writer himself, perhaps because he himself hasn’tgot the answers to the questions raised by the text. Illustrations, too,pose their own questions which sometimes complement those of the text by analogy or proximity or sometimes because the task of the illustrator, obligatory co-author, is to add his own doubts. And in this moment the pieces of the two puzzles are mixed up in our attempt to visualize the image which holds out against us. And it is even probable that in this moment an old certainty of ours has to be abandoned to be replaced by a new doubt.
This issue of Bloc tackles the controversial and impassioned theme of questions; questions which literature and illustration pose the user with no intention of offering answers or solutions. Each individual must finish the job how they may, using the tools which his unique, non-transferable history as a reader has granted him. From there our attitude in the moment of preparing the contents has been to remain in the shadow of doubt and uncertainty and sharethem with you.
(Cover illustration: Isidro Ferrer, Libro de las preguntas. Published by Media Vaca)  |  | | Questionnaire | | Teresa Duran, Inma Vellosillo, Pepe García Oliva and Martha López |  Someone, whose name it would be better not to remember once described children’s literature as ingenious. Ingenious? Although children’s fiction can be characterised by the number of questions asked by its protagonists, these questions, despite their apparent simplicity, are far from ingenious. We re-read some of themost important texts, from both the past and the present day, and we made notes. We came up with a list of three hundred and twenty questions. Then came the work of selecting those which could best outline an accurate personal profile. We got sixteen questions left. Pulling out all the stops, we subjected four professionals in the sector (Gloria Gorchs, Javier Sáez Castán, Rosa Serrano and Fernando Valverde) to our recently constructed LIJ questionnaire. Every day we sent them a question and when we received a reply we sent them the next until the questionnaire was complete. We maintained totally secrecy about the author of the question and the work which was our source of the question. And here you have the results, with the information complete, so that you may judge for yourselves how intriguing children’s fiction can be and with what brilliance the interviewees get out of tight corners. If you feel so inclined, use this same questionnaire and the same astute methodology to get to know your friends. We would be really pleased if this Bloc questionnaire spread everywhere. | | | A look at the dark | | Xabier P. DoCampo / Miguel Vázquez Freire |  Miguel Vázquez Freire (Corcubión, A Coruña, 1951) navigates the mystery of the word with the security of one who knows the ways of knowledge and its roots. And he does it conscious that words always keep an ultimate meaning which resists us, that which gives the true information about the named object, that which is only revealed to the poet, highest keeper of the ultimate meaning of words. A professor of Philosophy, author of educational texts in this subject, translator of Descartes, dynamo for pedagogic groups who discuss the matter; all this has made him a fathomer of the word and of its creative capacity. This has led him to give magnificent works to the LIJ, as much for the theatre as in narrative prose, in many of which mystery and fantasy make their home. The former as a confirmation of the impossibility of total knowledge and the latter as a metaphor for a wished -for discovery, as a human desire to know things beyond the veil of mystery. Miguel knows how to follow the tracks of words in order to expose the mysteries which they imprison as soon as they have been converted into text. Miguel knows that we are the word, and that the word is, for human beings, a blast of heat which guides us as the Merlin ring does for Arno in his novel Proxecto Pomba Dourada. If weare capable of unravelling its meaning it leads us to salvation. Miguel Vázquez Freire loves the word as a place of refuge for human understanding, as an open destination for the man who looks for the entrance gates to his own heart. But he also knows the word as the most mysterious of human talents. | | | Mario Merlino: a polyhedron with many faces | | Antonio Ventura / Mario Merlino |  Mario Merlino was born in Argentina some time in the last century. He has lived in Madrid for more than thirty years. He graduated in the Arts from the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, then dedicated himself to writing and trans-lation. He was a versatile creator, a polyhe-dron with many faces, the best known being those of translator and poet but there are many others. The most interesting thing is that these faces have no adjoining edges, rather they are seamlessly linked so that we go from one to another almost without realising it, perhaps because all these faces are dominated by the same look, the look of a man who views the world with a two-fold innocence: the innocence of a child and that second innocence, referred to by Antonio Machado, which comes from not believing in anything. In his work as a translator we would highlight his work on Portuguese writers such as Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector, Lygia Bojunga Nunes, Ana María Machado, Marina Colasanti, Eça de Queirós and António Lobo Antunes – in 1994 he recei-ved the National Translation Prize for his work on Auto de Condenados – and among the Italian writers, Natalia Ginzburg and Gianni Rodari. As a poet his works are collected in the following books: Missa pedestris, Libaciones y otras voces (CD with texts in poetry and prose read by the author), Arte cisoria. Anthologies: Entre paréntesis, Esto no tiene nombre, and Palabras a la deriva… | | | Isidro Ferrer: creator versus artesan | | Antonio Ventura / Sergio A. González |  Isidro Ferrer was born in Madrid, graduated from the Saragossa School of Dramatic Arts, studied mime in Paris, worked in the studio of the graphic designer Peret in Barcelona and moved to Huesca twelve years ago where he has lived since. At first he dedicated himself to the theatre, but for the last twenty years his work has been within the field of graphic design, and proof of his maturity in this field is the National Design Prize which he was awarded in 2002. It’s not his only creative work. His efficient incursions into the territory of the illustration of children’s books –and not so children’s books– earned him the National Illustration Prize a few years later in 2006 for his book Una casa para el abuelo (A House For Grandfather) on a text by Grasa Toro, which was published by Ediciones Sinsentido, and which had been initially published in France by Editions Thierry Magnier. Isidro Ferrer combines the two dimensions of artist and artisan that we find in some creators, especially in sculptors. When one visits Jorge Oteiza’s studio, one discovers his surprising gallery of minimalist and light compositions in chalk and one inevitably thinks “if all of this were translated into the dimensions that the sculptor dreams of…”. In the same way, when one enters Isidro Ferrer’s workshop and goes into that scene inhabited by exquisitely crafted and aesthetically pleasing objects, one feels that a skilled hand has carried out the orders of an intelligent and sensitive mind. | | | And you, picture, what do you say? | | Teresa Duran / Emma Bosch |  Should the illustration in a picture book reply to the questions generated by the text? And if itshould, should it always tell the truth? Can’t it lie? Do questions illustrate or do the answers do it? What do the illustrations illustrate in books which ask questions? And what if it were the illustration asking the questions? | | | Picture Book | | A Mano Cultura |  We don’t know if literature aimed at children has the duty to be questioning, impertinent and challenging. Does it? At the present time there is a certain experimentation in the field of picture books which have not stopped being complacent and well-meant, offering useless (?) answers even though no-one has asked any questions, which calms the spirit of the readers and above all of the so-called mediators. Everything according to convention.
¿Cómo es posible??!, Detective John Chatterton, El enemigo, El final del verano, Estaba oscuro y sospechosamente tranquilo, Historia de la resurrección del papagayo, La gran pregunta, Noche de tormenta, Selma | |
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