Nürnberger Nachrichten / Nürnberger Zeitung June 3, 2021

A gentle rebel 

PICTURE BOOKS 

Helmut Spanner has been inspiring children with cardboard, paintbrush and pencil for more than 40 years. 

BY MELANIE SCHEUERING 

For decades, the public was not interested in him. Now that Helmut Spanner has turned 70, it is suddenly apparent that the native of Augsburg has sold a whole twelve million children's books, that he is successful as a composer and musician and above all: that he really has something to say. 

His heart's desire is children and their view of the world. Only those who understand them can support children and give them access to development and education, says Spanner. Ever since he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in the seventies, he has been inspired by this subject. 

"You know," Spanner often says during a telephone conversation with our newspaper, and then he talks himself into a frenzy until he is interrupted or the connection to his second home in the Allgäu region goes down. But actually you don't want to interrupt him at all, because there is something fascinating about his message and the enthusiasm that goes with it. 

Perhaps because it is simple. As simple as the pictures in his cardboard books, with which he has captivated countless children over the past 45 years. Realistically naïve, he paints the brown-grey tabby kitten playing with a red children's shoe on the cover of his classic "I Am the Little Cat". Depicted with attention to detail, but without distracting details as universally as possible. 

The first edition was published in 1981 by Ravensburger Verlag in the new vertical format. To this day, the book looks exactly the same as it did then, only one page was deleted - for cost reasons, as Spanner says. 

Although some things inevitably seem a bit old-fashioned now, the book is still popular. 

Spanner knows exactly why. Because small children, who are in the process of opening up the world and learning language, are dependent on clear, lifelike pictures. The short texts - usually only one simple sentence per page - are also written by Spanner, but are, as he himself says, "incidental". 

For his pictures, Spanner uses a mixture of drawing and painting with watercolour techniques. The fur of the little cat, which as a first-person narrator describes what it experiences throughout the day - you can almost feel how soft it must be. Materials such as the leather laces of little Christine, who lovingly cares for her pet, the stone slabs on the terrace, the piled-up firewood, the ball of wool in the living room - everything seems real to the touch. 

The no less successful debut work "Erste Bilder, erste Wörter" (First Pictures, First Words) is designed in the same way, only without a story - and all the other 20 or so cardboard picture books from Spanner's pen. "In contrast to me and my intellectual approach, most picture book authors take an artistic approach, i.e. the figure or object must not look like it does in reality. 

must not look like it does in reality, because then it is not art," Spanner explains with unmistakable irony. "Absurd." 

So the fact that he himself doesn't strike a chord with the zeitgeist is probably the reason why the feuilleton ignored him for 45 years and other colleagues with far smaller runs took home prizes. Spanner never became a star like Horst Eckert alias Janosch, who published 300 titles for the same circulation, nor did he become a millionaire. "It is overestimated what one earns from cardboard picture books as an author. Cents," he explains. "But it is the case that, unlike many colleagues, I was able to make a living from it at some point." 

Spanner finds confirmation in the children's reactions. Already as an art student, he tested very practically in a kindergarten what the little ones think of certain pictures and illustrations, what they can do something with and what they carelessly put aside. The findings, underpinned by the theories of the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, flowed into his admission thesis on the "cardboard picture book" - which, by the way, was graded with an A at the time. In contrast, the practical work, the cardboard picture book "Meine ersten Sachen" (My First Things), which is still sold today, was given a grade of 5.

A mother, Spanner tells us, once wrote to him that her little son did not speak a single word for almost three years - until he got hold of the book about the little cat and suddenly babbled away. She was overjoyed and grateful. Adults who visit Spanner and his wife Christine in their old studio flat in Munich's Maxvorstadt district remember the pictures in his books in detail. 

"That's the core," says Spanner. "The recognition effect. From that, the children learn to form concepts." He could talk for hours about the increasing reading difficulties among children, the educational mission of the literary scene and the profit orientation in publishing. At times, a certain resignation resonates. There will be no more new books by Spanner. 

The 70-year-old has always lived out his creativity with music. Hardly anyone knows that Spanner, who plays piano, guitar and bass, has composed music for "Tatort" and many other films together with director Dominik Graf - a friend from school days.

And recently Spanner himself released an album of instrumental pieces. "I could live without a brush, but not without music," he says. The pieces are mostly light and upbeat, but only seemingly simple. Much like his children's books, there is a deep love of arranging in them. He knows that even with that, he has "no chance" of getting on a big stage. But if that was what he was after, he wouldn't have been allowed to make cardboard picture books either.

Words to grasp

Author and illustrator Helmut Spanner turns 70. His cardboard picture books have sold twelve million copies - and have been shaping early childhood perception for more than forty years, 

BY BARBARA HORDYCH

For very many people, Helmut Spanner's picture books are their introduction to the world of language and literature. But very few of them can remember them - until they have children of their own again or deal with the upbringing of young children. And experience anew how two and three year olds take Spanners cardboard picture books like "First Pictures - First Words" or "I am the Little Cat" into their hands. Fascinated, they look at the sturdy pages with the colourful three-dimensional illustrations of cup and spoon, bread roll and banana, rediscover the real objects in their environment - and make the connection between the two.

The Augsburg-born creator of these books, which have been bestsellers in children's rooms for 40 years with twelve million copies sold (and probably even more "readers"), turns 70 this Friday. A few days before, the lively and very communicative jubilarian, together with his wife Christine, invites people to a coffee at a distance in his spacious Schwabing flat in the Türkenstraße. The Academy of Fine Arts, where Spanner studied art education in the 1970s, is only a stone's throw away. And the primary school next door is not the one where his wife Christine taught. But they keep Spanner's lifelong theme present: the question of perception and language acquisition and how one is connected to the other.

At the latest since Spanner went to kindergartens as a young academy student for the purpose of analysing picture books, it became clear to him: "The children come from the grasping experience, they come via the hands. That means tactile perception is important because it's a precursor to abstract visual perception." Children learn perception through feeling and grasping - "they grasp in the literal sense," explains Spanner. That's why his cardboard picture books pick children up "where they are at the age of two." With them, the child learns to recognise objects in the world of the picture that he or she has only known from reality up to now. "It's a flat world. Because what used to be a cup that the child could reach into now appears in the book. But it can no longer reach in here. Nor can it grasp the cup any more. So the child has to learn the picture sign all over again. That's why the things in my cardboard picture books are reduced," says Spanner. He draws the cup without any patterns. "Because otherwise a child would learn the patterns along with the cup. In the worst case, that would lead to sofas with flower patterns later on," he says and laughs.

He says it is important to emphasise the essentials of the objects in three dimensions and to leave out what is not necessary. Conversely, what belongs functionally to the cup must absolutely be present in the picture. "The wall, for example, you have to see that it goes in and you can put something in it. And the handle, of course, is important from a functional point of view, so that you don't burn your fingers. Mentally, that's the important thing about the cup. Everything else is interchangeable."

What sounds so obvious and shines even more beautifully in red and yellow, green and orange in the cardboard picture books he drew began in 1977 with the publication of "Meine ersten Sachen" ("My First Things") by Ravensburger Verlag. While still a student, he had travelled to Ravensburg to explain flatly to the publisher's founder Otto Maier: "Do you actually know that you publish picture books that children don't even recognise?" He had come to this conclusion through his research in kindergarten practice - many cardboard picture books were designed in such a way that it was difficult for the children to make sense of the objects depicted. His statement at the time was "quite cheeky", Spanner says in retrospect. But Maier let him do it - and the result spoke for itself.

Of course, the picture book publishing programme was still very small back then, whereas today it is many times larger, Spanner points out. His picture book colleague Ali Mitgutsch, who lives in the same street, once said to him: "Helmut, I experienced the golden age, you experienced the silver age, and now comes the tin age," Spanner quotes. Incidentally, he and subsequent authors owe a lot to the Wimmelbuch author Mitgutsch, says Spanner. "He was the one who got the publisher to give him a percentage of the sales of the edition. Until then, it had been customary to have the work bought outright with a contract."

The success of the book encouraged him to give up his brief interlude as an art teacher at the grammar school. During his studies, he and some fellow students were still inspired by the desire to be "better teachers one day" and had even founded the "Bilderbuch Group" together. But the practice at school disappointed him. Just as he was disappointed by the reaction of his father, who disinherited him immediately when he told him of his decision. His wife Christine, however, to whom he has been married for 45 years - childless - supported him.

Together with Dominik Graf, he also composed numerous film scores.

"My father played the violin himself and was an excellent draughtsman. But just as he was forced to take over a haulage business after the war, he also demanded that his son refrain from exercising his talents as a free artist." The fathers of this war generation never learned to talk about their experiences, Spanner says. "They simply had no words for it." An experience he often exchanged with the director Dominik Graf, with whom he used to attend the arts grammar school in Marktoberdorf together.

"Dominik was soon expelled from school and switched to a private grammar school. But years later we met again by chance and he asked me if I wanted to compose the music for his films together with him," says Spanner. Over the course of ten years, the film scores for numerous "Fahnder" episodes, for the anniversary Tatort "Frau Bu lacht" and for the major cinema project "Die Sieger" were created.

While he has always evolved musically, he has always remained true to his artistic views when it comes to picture books. "Why should I change anything?" After all, he says, even after forty years, every child still starts with the same steps.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Barbara Hordych, 2021

A carousel full of music

Helmut Spanner composed a CD , by Alois Knoller

The enforced Covid 19 break can awaken creative potential. Thus, the popular picture book illustrator Helmut Spanner ("Ich bin die kleine Katze", "Erste Bilder, erste Wörter") has returned to his love of music. In his home studio in Nassenbeuren, the Augsburg-born artist has now produced his first self-composed and self-recorded CD entitled "Karussell".

He says that his time in the school band "The Smoking Chickens" at the "Musisches Gymnasium" in Marktoberdorf and his time as a student in Munich, when he worked in various dance bands to supplement his modest salary in addition to his studies at the art academy, have awakened in him. His instruments were and are guitar and bass. The piano comes along anyway.

So now he turns his carousel to danceable, instrumental piano songs. From initially leisurely rounds, Spanner gets the nostalgic fairground vehicle moving mightily. Sometimes he makes it roll like a ship at sea, then jump like a calf in the pasture. At the end, the listeners take part in the village country life with cockcrow, pig grunting and mooing in a hearty stomping dance.

In between, Helmut Spanner indulges in nostalgic memories of tea dances and boogie parties. The songs celebrate a carefree life and exude good humour. Even the blues sounds more dreamy than sad with him. His friend, the film director Dominik Graf, writes that these songs "seem like a quotation from another time" and convey "an attitude to life that brought with it different, more unbroken feelings than today". Their cheerfulness is fresh and there is always a harmonic or melodic surprise hidden in them.

Augsburger Allgemeine, Alois Knoller, 2020

Available on the homepage www.helmut-spanner.de and as a download from Amazon, 

iTunes, Spotify. 

Esslinger Zeitung, Interview by Stephanie Danner

Mr Spanner, what are you working on at the moment?

Nothing at the moment. I am now 67 and actually wanted to end my work as a picture book author, but I have been saying that for about 20 years.

However, "Ravensburger" will continue to publish so-called second editions in addition to the original books. In addition, since the beginning of the year there has been a new cooperation with "Oberstebrink", a small, pedagogically very committed Munich publishing house. Only recently, four cardboard picture books with short texts were published there.  I am particularly pleased that "Oberstebrink-Burckhardthaus" has published my exam paper for the Munich Art Academy "Rund ums Pappbilderbuch". Here, for all those interested, the theoretical background of cardboard picture books and their importance for the later process of learning to read is finally made clear. 

Cardboard picture books have been your profession for decades. How can you recognise a good picture book for the youngest children?

By the fact that it picks up the little children where they actually are in their development. For example, I received a letter saying that a child had wanted to look at my book "I am the little cat" every evening for two years. This child incorporated his own daily experiences into the book. Something like that is a bull's eye for me, which of course has its reasons. At this age, it's not about the text, but about me grabbing the children emotionally with the pictures. For example, I send the little cat through all kinds of primal situations that the child itself experiences, such as eating, sleeping, meeting a friend, being afraid, being safe..... I try to present everything so clearly and in such detail that even a small child has a chance to recognise the pictures. That is not a matter of course. After all, a small child has enormous problems even recognising the flat illustrations in a book. In this developmental phase, a newborn child only slowly explores its real, three-dimensional environment step by step. The mouth and especially the hands play a dominant role here, and the child learns to grasp the world through grasping. Above all, the different materials of things are important for the child to distinguish things in this developmental phase.  

So materials are important. And the form?

Of course, the shape of the grasped objects is also important. This tactile phase is the first stage, which is gradually replaced by the much more abstract purely visual perception. Then the child has to touch things less and less with its hands and only their visible form, i.e. their appearance, is sufficient for recognition.

Explain this with an example. 

Small children take a cup, reach into it, feel the walls, put their fingers through the handle, they feel the hardness of the material and its temperature. All this makes a cup for the child. A spoon, a teddy, etc. feel completely different. 

And suddenly the flat, two-dimensional book comes along and everything the child has had up to now to distinguish things suddenly no longer applies. Nowhere can it reach in, embrace anything, everything feels the same. It doesn't even know what is up and down here, and what is behind and what is in front. One can often observe that small children hold picture books upside down at the beginning, which only means that they simply do not recognise what the picture is supposed to mean. 

 Also, the little ones often run their hands over the pictures and want to touch the two-dimensional things. That is how foreign this flat book world is to them. It is part of our culture and must be learned with it. This is how reading begins.

How do you draw a banana, for example? 

You can draw a banana by drawing a black outline around a yellow surface. Such a representation is very far from what a banana used to be for the child, i.e. spatiality and material - besides taste, of course! If you now say the word "banana" to a child 20 times about the picture, the child will eventually parrot this. I, on the other hand, draw the banana three-dimensionally, as clearly as possible and with visible materials - e.g. the skin open and the flesh ribbed. Such a representation offers the possibility

that the child actively recognises the picture itself, goes to the fruit basket, gets a banana and proudly says: "Nane". Psychologically, this success strengthens the child's self-confidence. 

Moreover, only such a detailed representation opens the way to forming as many differentiated terms as possible, such as peel and flesh. 

Are there colleagues who take a similar approach?

There are many creative artists who artistically design picture books according to their imagination. Many adults, in turn, like to buy such books because they personally like them. That's all understandable, but both times the young child is left out of the equation. But of course there are people who intuitively understand my approach. Consciously, brain researchers, developmental psychologists, educationalists and anyone who can think their way into children's perceptions understand me. 

When you draw today: What do you do differently than 40 years ago?

Essentially, I don't do anything differently. I am happy about that, because I recognise a coherence in my work.  A freelance painter would rather say: I have hardly developed any further in 40 years. For me, however, it is not primarily about painting per se. A painter friend once said to me: "I am sinking in the sea of possibilities of painting. And I spontaneously replied, "That can't happen to me. I'm bathing in a puddle and there are all these children standing around it."

So you don't see yourself as an artist? 

Of course I have an artistic and aesthetic approach, but the decisive question is always what and how I draw something so that it is recognisable to the small child and can only thus arouse his interest. 

You have sold more than 12 million copies. Does that make you proud?

It does make me proud when you consider that my books are not for ages 9-99, but only for ages half a year to three years. I also take a certain satisfaction in the fact that some of my books are still on the market even after 40 years. Among them is my first book entitled: "Meine ersten Sachen" (My First Things), which was my practical exam paper at the Academy of Art at the time and was graded "poor". The banana, by the way, is from this book.

Do some buyers also react negatively to your drawings?

Generally I get very good feedback. Criticism is occasionally voiced that my books lack a smartphone and that I am therefore not up to date. In my book "Erste Bilder Erste Wörter" (First Pictures First Words), for example, two bears are depicted talking to each other on the phone via corded telephones. This is the only way I can make the function of things - in this case communication - visible and thus comprehensible for the children.

My books are there to introduce them to the world of books and thus also to make it easier for them to learn to read later on. Whether I can change something here or have changed something? I don't know.

Esslinger Zeitung, Stephanie Danner, 2018

The art of creating a cardboard picture book

BY INA NETZER

Anyone can make cardboard? Fiddlesticks! A good picture book builds on the fact that small children understand their environment with their mouths and hands. Helmut Spanner has been working on how to make the sensual and haptic aspects of picture content visible since his art studies. The result: over 12 million copies sold of classics such as "I am the little cat" or "First pictures, first words". 

Mr Spanner, how can a picture represent what you can feel and touch?

Cardboard picture books are for toddlers aged 6-24 months. Especially in the very early "reading age", the child enjoys individual objects from its environment. These can now be depicted in a "tactile" way by drawing the materials of the things, e.g. the fur hairs of the teddy, the grain of the wood, etc.

1-year-old children first have to learn to understand symbolic representations. Why do realistic pictures support them better than abstract ones? 

Because realistic pictures look more like real objects than abstract ones. If I draw an object spatially and make its material visible, the step from the real object to its representation is smaller for the child than if I reduce an object to an outline and a coloured surface. I was already able to prove in my examination paper "Rund ums Pappbilderbuch" (All about cardboard picture books) that small children do not recognise such representations and thus do not become interested in books. The early recognition of pictures initiates the later process of learning to read.

In your opinion, how rich in detail should first stories for little ones be illustrated?

I think it is important that as many details of a story as possible are recognisable, meaningful and nameable for the child. It is also good if individual things recur on different pages. This makes it easier for the child to realise that the individual pages belong together and form a story. It is also great fun for children if they can discover a recurring motif on each page.

Followed up for you, Ina Nefzer, 2017

Book illustrations in the original

Almost everyone knows Helmut Spanner's picture books and for many they have been their introduction to literature. Cardboard picture books like "Erste Bilder - Erste Wörter" or "Ich bin die kleine Katze" (I am the little cat) have become classics in the world of books and belong in every child's room to this day. In 1977, Spanner published his first cardboard picture book with Ravensburger Buchverlag. Since then, many have followed, so that over 12 million have been sold to date. In the meantime, the Allgäu has become Spanner's adopted home in addition to the Bavarian metropolis of Munich. Here, the Heimatmuseum Buchloe, Rathausplatz 9, is now showing an exhibition of the master's work from 5 May to 5 June 2017 on every Sunday and public holiday from 2 to 5 pm.

Spanner, a native of Augsburg, studied at the Munich Art Academy after graduating from the Musisches Gymnasium in Marktoberdorf. There he was a co-founder of the "Gruppe Bilderbuch" (Picture Book Group), which was intensively involved with children's books. In his examination paper "Rund ums Pappbilderbuch" (All about cardboard picture books), he examined how children learn to perceive the world. Since then, pedagogical considerations have shaped the content and style of his books. He sees the "reading" of pictures as the preliminary stage of reading texts, hence the realistically drawn things and detailed situations.

Info: www.helmut-spanner.de and facebook.com/helmutspanner.bilderbuch.

The special thing about this show of work: Many of the illustrations can be seen in the original, which have been widely distributed in print. Preliminary drawings and the books themselves round off the whole.

Literature Garage, May 2017

https://literaturgarage.de/?s=Helmut+Spanner

"I am a service provider for children" - Helmut Spanner in portrait

By Katrin Baumer, for medien.bayern, 27 April 2016

Helmut Spanner's flat is bright, on the walls hang his drawings - lovingly designed and colourful animals - on the table in the study are numerous of his picture books, including the first work "Meine ersten Sachen" (My First Things), which Spanner) drew while he was still a student. Spanner himself is sitting casually at his desk, he has had a busy day, full of interview appointments, yet he is wide awake, the mischievousness in the corners of his eyes. The illustrator has two reasons to celebrate in 2016: his 65th birthday and his 40th anniversary as a children's author with over 11 million books sold. 

The Augsburg-born artist discovered his love of drawing as early as primary school. And the teachers also saw his talent back then, even if the picture that tipped the scales was rather unusual: a very detailed depiction of the battle on the Lechfeld. 

Spanner smiles broadly as he recalls the story behind it: "I imagined the motif like a knight's castle being stormed. My cousin then told me that it was completely different. An open field and everyone stormed each other. My imagination was cranked up. There were 28 dead people in my picture!" He said he depicted the severed heads and the dead horses in particular detail - too much detail for the taste of his teachers. "They asked my parents if everything was OK with me!" the picture book author recounts with a laugh. "On the other hand, the teacher exhibited my picture in Grade 8 as a model because it was so good! I especially had a hard time with the horses' hind legs, that's what I remember." 

Realism as the key to success

This recollection already reveals what distinguishes Spanner's further work: The demand on his pictures to be realistic - and to work compositionally. "Sometimes you sit there as if you've never held a brush before," Spanner explains. "Those are days when nothing works. Sometimes I lie in bed depressed and ask myself: 'How does this painting work as a whole? And suddenly it comes - and then the picture is drawn in ten minutes." He wants to depict everything in as much detail as possible, because children, he knows, are a critical audience: "I am a service provider for children. They learn to read with my books! That is totally underestimated! If children don't realise what's in a picture, they throw it away."

Spanner was already concerned with this approach during his studies at the Art Academy in Munich. Here, together with other students, he founded the "Gruppe Bilderbuch" (Picture Book Group), which dealt with content-related, artistic, but also psychological questions on the subject of picture books. Because: "We didn't want to paint pictures of which people would later say "does that fit our sofa", we wanted to change the world!" The first contact with the Ravensburger publishing house was conducive to this plan. The publishing house was looking for new concepts for cardboard picture books - a field that Spanner had not previously had his eye on. So went his final thesis "Rund ums Pappbilderbuch" (All about cardboard picture books), with all his findings about children's perception, which he takes as the basis for all his books. "At Ravensburger I was lucky. I analysed children's books and said, the children just don't see what this is supposed to be, you have to draw it differently! And they thought, 'Let the young whippersnapper do it.' That's how the book "My First Things" came into being.

The philosopher among children's book authors

With his unique approach, Spanner has been reaching his young audience for 40 years now. The former operator of the children's bookshop Leander's Leseladen knows why and enthuses: "Helmut Spanner is the philosopher among authors for children. His pictures are optimally readable for young children, who first have to link experiences with concepts in order to make them readable." 

This is because, the founder of the Leseleben association suspects, he perfectly empathises with children's perception of the world. And Spanner also says: "I have to deal with two-year-olds! And they have completely different problems than older children or adults. Their vision is still blurred, words are not understood - it's like watching a blurred Chinese film. Except that an adult at least still knows that they are sitting on a chair watching a film. Little children don't know that. And that's where I pick them up."

Picking them up, says Hoffmann, who gives seminars on children's reading of images, follows a kind of zip system. "Children want to see something they can also recognise. That's what Helmut Spanner's books do. There is something familiar, and something new is added. Let's take the picture of a kitchen, for example: the child may already know a pan, but not how to bake a cake. He becomes aware of that when it is seen in the pictures and then experienced in reality."

Drawers without compromise

Especially the pedagogical component, the educational aspect, has always been an important aspect for Spanner. One that he wanted to make his profession - even if not as a children's book author. He originally intended to become a teacher. Just as his wife Christine, whom he has known since university and who has always supported him, has been partly involved in the conception of his books from the beginning. But why did he decide against school? "The traineeship was too uncreative for me. For example, if a pupil says to me: I can't draw, but I take good photos, then I say: Bring your photos. My job is not to breed an army of draughtsmen!"

So Spanner became a draughtsman himself. And without compromise. His parents even disinherited him when he decided on this career. But, according to the children's book author, that only strengthened his decision. Spanners' own favourite book as a child is significant: "Hanselmann hat große Pläne" by James Krüss. "Hanselmann simply wants to become everything. And then he does. The message to children here is: "I have all the possibilities" This is balm for a child's soul!" Gabriele Hoffmann thinks that Spanner himself is now passing on the balm: "His books educate children to be more self-confident. They experience with them: I can read." 

http://www.helmut-spanner.de

Leseleben.de

I'm working in a puddle and all around me are children

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary - an interview with Helmut Spanner by Gernot Körner

https://literaturgarage.de

Literature begins with the cardboard picture book. It is often the gateway to all other books. And depending on its quality, it is one of the deciding factors for our later relationship to books.

No one in this country has shaped the cardboard picture book as much as Helmut Spanner. He published his first work, Meine erste Sachen, 40 years ago. Since then, he has published many books that have influenced generations of children. 11.3 million books have now crossed the counter and his success continues. In his Munich flat, he told us a lot about his school days, his career and especially about the cardboard picture book.

Your school years were not necessarily groundbreaking for your later career. What happened back then?

I always wanted to pursue an artistic profession. At the arts grammar school in Marktoberdorf, I naturally majored in music and drawing. I was already dismissed with a grade 4 in music and a grade 4 in drawing. When I tell friends about that today, they can't understand it at all, especially since I was already writing compositions at that time. But composition was not on the curriculum. And so it wasn't in demand. So the epitome of music is not asked for at all. Certain skills are required, such as how to play at sight. That is still a disaster for me. Music works differently for me.

Can that also be transferred to drawing?

The whole pedagogical track has been completely wrong with me for as long as I can remember. Primary school was still fine. But then it started at the first grammar school in St. Stephan. I am a draughtsman. The art teacher at that time was from Expressionism. There we had to fold up the benches and draw pictures with our free hand and outstretched arm. But since he didn't explain to us that it was important to squeeze the water out of the brush first, the paint ran over our pictures in rows. There would have been sponges to dab it out with. But he didn't tell us. As a draughtsman, I had already had it with that method. It was not appropriate for me as a pupil. 

Those were downright traumatic experiences. But you still kept going.

In the end, it didn't impress me that much. What I lacked at that time was recognition. I wasn't bad at drawing. Only basically, the teachers always wanted something different from the skills I already had at that time. That is the central point of pedagogy. That was also the reason why I wanted to study education. After all, I learned then how not to do it as a teacher.

And then you studied to become a teacher.

Yes, also because I always wanted to work with young people. During my studies, I worked at two schools in Munich. And here exactly what went wrong at the grammar school went wrong again. Here, too, what was important was not what the pupils had in them, but rather the grammar school only wants to teach what it wants itself. The school simply does not focus on the individual. It doesn't try to bring out what is in the pupil and improve it. Worse still, in the end, the pupil is of no interest at all. That was a very bad experience for me. Eventually, I quit school. I was just under 30 years old at the time. The headmaster was very nice. He said, "Mr. Spanner, the way you talk about children's books ... You should do children's books." I had already drawn two children's books. And at that time the success of the cat book overtook me. It was clear to me that this could be my existence. I had already published my first book called "My First Things" when I was 25. That book is still around today.

Let's go back to your time at the art academy. How did you get started here?

At first I was rejected at the art academy. After half a year, I went there in person with the same works and submitted them to Professor Thomas Zacharias. I asked him why I wasn't accepted. After he didn't know himself, he accepted me.

My final project for the Academy of Fine Arts was my first cardboard picture book, "Meine ersten Sachen". I got a grade of 5 for it.

How did that come about?

The cardboard picture book was not art for the people at the Academy. The book was aimed at an audience, at children, so it was applied. Children's book is illustration and is already considered a low art by many. And now someone goes even further down, kneels in front of two-year-olds and makes something for them. That was the end of the line for the professors. They didn't understand that. In the end, the academy was a waste of time for me. Because you don't learn craftsmanship there either. The academy doesn't see that as its task. I remained self-taught.

Nevertheless, the academy was the starting point for your later work.

We came to the academy. It was a time of change, i.e. post-68. It was clear to us that we didn't want to paint pictures later on where someone would ask, "Does this picture go with my sofa? That wasn't ambitious enough for us. We wanted to change the world and start with the children. Where else? So we opened the "picture book" group. Among them, with me, were three to four senior students. Illustration fascinated us. We saw in picture books an approach to go outwards. What was great was that it was the time of the founders. 

We were at the academy but didn't have a single picture book. Finally, we wrote to the publishers asking them to at least send us their current programme. And within a month we had a whole cupboard full of books.

What did you discover?

We were interested in what was being taught in the children's books. The girls' roles were inactive, the boys had the active roles. Since we were all people who were interested in art, we didn't only look at the content, but also at the visual aspect. We looked for clichés. It was a situation of like-minded people and peers, learning without competition. This is where the passion was awakened.

How did you get from here to the cardboard picture book?

Thomas Zacharias had already published a book with Ravensburger. As a result, people from Ravensburger were suddenly sitting at the art academy - Gisela and Christian Stottele. They became aware of us and visited us. However, they rejected almost everything. But they were looking for new concepts for cardboard picture books. At that time, we didn't even know what cardboard picture books were. Nevertheless, we then developed cardboard picture concepts for 500 marks a head. We had to draw a ten-page concept and hand in two originals. 

The time was ripe and our ideas were used, at least in part; but not with us.

Why did you publish your first cardboard picture book with Ravensburger after all?

I needed the two originals I had handed in for my exams. They simply never came back. Whereupon I went to Ravensburg. So I stood in front of the publishing house building on a holiday that didn't exist in Bavaria. I wanted to go in there and then someone called out to me from a distance of about 30 metres, "I can see that from afar: you're an artist!" Later I found out that it was the publisher Otto Julius Maier. "Yes, that may well be that I am an artist. But I like to go in there now. Why is it closed?", I replied. I was then told that it was a holiday and I should come back the next day. 

Unfortunately, due to an editorial change, the pictures were then lost. While searching, I explained to the new editor if she knew they were doing books with Dick Bruna that toddlers don't understand. Because at that time I was already working on my thesis and had tested Dick Bruna's drawings on 50 kindergarten children. None of the children could tell me what was in a particular picture of Dick Bruna. It was a picture that showed a grandpa on the wall.

The Ravensburgers found that interesting. Eventually they let me make a cardboard picture book.

What happened next?

Gerlinde Wincierz was new at the publishing house at the time and accepted me into the programme. We went through twelve pictures and that was "My First Things". Later I was supposed to make four new pictures. I then traded them down like a fishmonger. I had to draw a comb instead of a brush. It took me six weeks to draw the comb. My inner resistance was simply too great. Toddlers are not combed with a comb, they are just combed with a brush. Besides, the brush is simply more beautiful and interesting from a drawing point of view.

What fascinates you most about drawing for toddlers?

With small children, it's all about original, simple, existential things. It has nothing to do with the big political and social issues that affect us every day. That was appealing to me.

Why do you think your books are so well received by the public?

On the one hand, I think the Ravensburgers have great distribution. But I also believe that my books pick up the children exactly where they are. The children come from the grasping experience. They come through the hands. Visual perception is only leading at the end of the second year of life. This means that tactile perception, the grasping experience, is important, is a preliminary stage of purely abstract visual perception. This is how children learn perception through grasping - they grasp. 

What used to be a cup that the child could reach into now appears in the book. But it can no longer reach into it. Nor can it grasp the cup any more. It is a flat world. The real cup is nature and the book is culture. For an adult, all this is completely normal. But a child is faced with a completely unknown world. 

All the criteria that the child has acquired through grasping and feeling suddenly no longer apply. That means it has to learn the pictorial sign completely new. I try to make this easier for the children by depicting the premises. By basically staying as close as possible to the visual image and not to the mental image.

Can you elaborate on that?

If I reduce the object to a line and a surface, then an adult knows what it is supposed to be. But it is ultimately a mental image. It has little to do with visual experience. Children see the same things as we do. The difference is that we have formed our visual image through millions of experiences. We know exactly that this is a chair, that this is a heater ... The concepts are there. In the child, the software is still largely unlearned. The brain computer is excellent, absorbs like a sponge. But everything has to be learned first.

How do you address this with your drawings?

The further the pictures go beyond the grasping range, the more difficult they are to recognise, the more abstract they are. That's why cardboard picture books for small children have to be as close to reality as possible. My things are not reduced in appearance, but in spirit. That means, for example, that I draw a cup without any patterns. Because otherwise a child would learn the patterns along with the cup. In the worst case, this would later lead to curtains with flower patterns.

However, everything that belongs to the cup functionally has to be there - the wall, you have to see that it goes in, that you can put something in it, and the handle is important because of its function, so that you don't burn your fingers. Mentally, that's the important thing about the cup. Everything else is interchangeable. 

So I try to emphasise the essentials of the objects and what is not necessary and has no function, I leave out.

When I go to the shop to buy a book for a two-year-old child, what should I look for?

It has to be close to reality, aesthetic, i.e. taste-forming, it has to be simple, real and without inconsistencies, emotional.... 

But how can objects be emotional for children? Especially when they are reduced to the essentials, as in your case?

Of course objects are emotional for children. When a child sees a ball, for example, it laughs because all the experiences it has had with the ball come up when it sees the picture. The prerequisite is that the ball is recognised as such. But if I only draw an outline and a surface as a ball, then it can also be a sun, a plate or a ball. The picture sign then becomes too open, too abstract, and the child no longer has direct emotional access. 

It is not the free artistic style that is called for in the cardboard picture book. The demands come from the child. I just can't realise myself as a free painter in a cardboard picture book. That's where I'm wrong. That is a different category. It's about the children. But not in the sense of satisfying only what the children want to see.

How important is the cardboard in this?

Very important: the children bite into it, of course. They eat the cardboard. I once got to see a book where there was actually only half a page left. And the parents confirmed that the rest was gone. The books have to endure something. The children have a very intensive contact with them.

Has something changed in people's perception in the past 40 years? 

I guarantee that nothing has changed in the perceptual development of young children. It happens in 10,000-year steps. The question is always where to start: with the children, with fashion or with the different artistic perceptions. I start with the children. It is perfectly clear to me how children perceive.

When books of yours are published, do you look at them together with children?

Generally, no. But I had a test subject last time with "Nasi und Mausi". That was important because my editor doubted that the book would work with small children. So I was able to prove to her quite impressively that it does work. In the meantime, the number of copies sold is further proof.

Apart from that, I am sure that I am on a childlike level. I have a very good access to it after all these years. However, it is very difficult to describe where that comes from. 

After 40 years with all your books, what was your best experience?

My best experience was when a book of mine was put together that is no longer on the market. It was a paper picture book at the time. The book was published for my 30th anniversary to show what I had done since then. When I got the sample in Ravensburg at that time, I went home by train, looked at the book and thought to myself, this is actually a closed thing. Although there was a difference of 20 years between the left and right pages. That was an unbelievable feeling of happiness. Because what I had done in the past 30 years and now held in my hands completely fitted together. For me it is a confirmation that for me it is not about my craft, but always about the children. It's just not an ego trip where I want to show people how great I can paint, but it starts from the child. And that's always the same. 

When the painter Rabe Habdank from Berlin wrote to me that he was sinking in the sea of possibilities of painting, I replied that this could not happen to me. I am working in a puddle and there are children all around me.

Are you fed up with cardboard picture books after 40 years?

Basically not. Whereas the developments in the publishing houses are getting fiercer. I would simply like to have an exhibition of my drawings on a larger scale. And I would like to see more recognition for my profession. I think the board picture book is very important because it is the introduction to books, because it accelerates learning to read later on, because it is quite clear that we have to give children developmentally appropriate things that engage them emotionally. So that the children get into the books because the first experience with the book is good.

And what are your plans for the future?

I will make more music again in the future. I have about 1200 compositions that I have recorded in a preliminary stage. I want to work on that and hope that there will be ten good ones. 

But that doesn't mean I've lost interest in books. I'm already noticing again that there's a lot going on in my head. I have ideas up to the grave. There are enough concepts. I just don't know when to draw it. That's always a big task. I sat on the cat book for one and a half years. The three of us worked on the bear book for almost two years. I don't work digitally because I want an original. That has a different quality for me.

PORTRAIT

Millions love his picture books

Author Helmut Spanner has found a second home in Nassenbeuren. This also benefits his work. By Manuela Frieß

The view from the conservatory wanders into the autumnal garden, on to the yellow glowing Maria Schnee chapel and the already bare linden trees of the avenue. "Somehow it all fits wonderfully here. The great view, the peace and quiet and the fact that Christoph von Schmid was also a resident here," Helmut Spanner says enthusiastically. He has been in Nassenbeuren with his wife Christine for several years. Actually, they have both lived in Munich since their student days, but when Christine Spanner's parents became older and more in need of care, they spent more and more time in Unterallgäu and after the death of both of them, they took over and renovated the house. Now they live in Munich and Nassenbeuren.

Speaking of Christoph von Schmid, he is not only the author of "Ihr Kinderlein kommet", but also of children's books. However, the 18th century pastor is no longer known for this. Very few people know the name Helmut Spanner either. But if you see one of his books, you will recognise his typical drawings. And there lies the crux: children's books are not bought by those for whom he makes them, but by their parents, grandpas and grandmas. And the children who grew up with his books are guaranteed not to remember the name.

As a student he was in the "cardboard picture book group".

But maybe they will remember his drawings. At least that's what the 64-year-old hopes, because he attaches particular importance to them. "My books are often the first contact with a two-dimensional representation of the world," explains Helmut Spanner, "and that's why the drawings in them have to be as realistic as possible." And this is not based on the latest findings of neurologists; he already established this 40 years ago with his visits to kindergartens. As a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, he belonged to the "cardboard picture book group", which studied the first books for children very intensively.

Many of the results he gathered in the process have since been confirmed by science. His thesis at the time, however, was graded with a "deficient", i.e. a five. Nevertheless, the book handed in with the thesis: "Meine ersten Sachen" ("My First Things") is a bestseller in bookshops. A book that is not only a bestseller, but above all a longseller. If you take all of Helmut Spanner's picture books together, he has sold over eleven million books in almost 40 years. Yet he actually once wanted to become a teacher.

His philosophy about children's books and his insights into perception in childhood are well-founded. And he wants to push them through, for which he accepts that he is called a stubborn person and that he sometimes sits on the drawings for up to one and a half years, depending on the project. "As an outsider, you wouldn't believe how long it sometimes takes to come up with a concept or a title," says the bestselling author.

He prefers to work in the conservatory

His favourite place to work is in the conservatory. There are not only hundreds of pens and colours there, but also enough peace and inspiration. "I used to think that I would enjoy sitting in cafés and working there, too. Then I realised that I'm not a café guy at all," he says 

and laughs. Instead, he now prefers to photograph the neighbour's chickens so that he can draw realistic pictures of the hen with chicks.

Even though Helmut Spanner has earned his living mainly with drawings, another passion is music. Together with his friend, the director Dominik Graf, he has composed and arranged a lot of film music. And he also has many hundreds of melodies and arrangements already in his head. "That's why I won't be doing any more books soon, because the many pieces still have to be composed," explains the Gersthofen native. At the same time, he seems so energetic and in such a good mood that you definitely believe him to be capable of this large number.

Even though he makes his drawings by hand, the 64-year-old is at the cutting edge of technology. Not only as far as the music is concerned. He assembles his drawings himself on the computer, with the help of a brain researcher he has developed an app and for some months now he has been spending a lot of time on his projects on his homepage and Facebook page. He wants to finally make his findings on children's perception accessible to a broader public. The fact that he hasn't got as far as he would like, however, makes him quite foxy. But anyone who radiates as much energy and passion as he does will certainly be able to cope with it.

Augsburger Allgemeine, Manuela Frieß, 2015

http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/mindelheim/Millionen-lieben-seine-Bilderbuecher-id36197922.html

Annotations by Helmut Spanner:

It was not my theoretical work that was given the grade 1 at the time, but the visual work, i.e. the originals of "Meine ersten Sachen". 

The group was not called: "Gruppe Pappbilderbuch", but "Gruppe Bilderbuch". When the group was founded, we students didn't even know what cardboard picture books were.

First art academy, then children's books:

Helmut Spanner has sold millions of books.

The art of playing dumb

Helmut Spanner has been painting picture books for the youngest children for 35 years.

Munich - When it comes to the perception of small children, Helmut Spanner can't take a joke. He only has to think of such impossible drawings, the silhouette of a cup, for example. He now takes a pencil, bends over his kitchen table and demonstrates the whole thing. A cup seen from the side, without any spatial dimension of the object. This, says Spanner, is practically unrecognisable to children.

"Adults know that a cup is supposed to be hidden behind these lines," he explains. "But a child only sees a line." He understandably doesn't think much of this way of painting for young children. In his picture books for children up to the age of three, he draws differently, of course, namely mainly in three dimensions. "The art is to play dumb," he explains. Children are completely new in the world, they don't yet have the possibility to draw any conclusions from a drawing that is too abstract. You have to put yourself in their shoes. But that is not all Spanner does. He also asked the children.

"I went to numerous day-care centres, showed the children different pictures and asked them what they saw." They often couldn't tell, even though they were three-year-olds who could already talk. What serious long-term consequences such wrong picture books can have is something Spanner can really get enraged about. "If the children don't understand anything, they lose interest in the book." And not just in this one, but in books in general, the illustrator fears. 

"There's no need to be surprised about poor Pisa results." 

For 35 years, Spanner, who celebrates his 60th birthday this Saturday, has been drawing picture books for the youngest children. The fact that this activity does not simply consist of drawing for him, but that it has a quasi-ideological background, can be explained by his socialisation as a "post-68er", as he calls himself. In the 70s, he studied at the art academy to become a teacher. "We were not satisfied with what was on offer at the academy," he reports. "We wanted to change the world.

Spanner, who was already interested in the perception of young children at that time, founded the "picture book group" at the academy. This group ordered the then current books from publishers and examined them according to scientific criteria - with devastating results. All the works of the time were exactly as they should not be in Spanner's opinion. They began to produce alternatives. And already at that time, contact was made with the Ravensburger publishing house. Spanner got his first order practically because of his cheekiness.

"I asked during a visit to the publishing house, which was looking for new concepts for cardboard picture books, if they actually knew what they were making for a hoax," he recalls and grins. An assertion that aroused the curiosity of the publishers. Spanner drew his first picture book. It is called "Meine ersten Sachen" (My First Things) and has been on the market continuously since 1977. Spanner's books never disappeared, he has sold ten million books in 35 years. Many of them have been classics for generations, such as "Ich bin die kleine Katze", which has been in the publisher's range for 30 years.

35 years drawing for small children - and that as a graduate of the art academy? Spanner sometimes gets asked stupid questions. Whether he finds it fulfilling, for example. "I find the job incredibly difficult," he says. "Try working for readers who have no prior training whatsoever for their perception." 

Incidentally, Spanner has also composed film music on the side, around 1000 pieces. His commitment, however, is clearly camped. Another question comes to mind: does he have children? No. None of his own. But Mia, 8, "foster child" of his wife and him. With her, Spanner draws like a bird.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Claudia Wessel, 2011

Helmut Spanner - draughtsman, educator, musician, birthday boy

One could not write more beautifully about Helmut Spanner than the way he does it himself on his homepage www.helmut-spanner.de. Self-ironically and not without a point, an exceptional artist celebrates his life's journey, which is actually a real picture book success, even if not everything pointed to this at the beginning.

Not only did the illustrator, born in 1951, leave the arts grammar school with a grade of four in drawing, but at first Spanner did not want to take up the art academy either. After a persistent second attempt, it finally worked out. But what a disappointment, instead of craft skills, Spanner was bored with artificial genius and therefore preferred to go swimming. Certainly a better school of vision for him than the hermetic world of the academy.

For Spanner wanted to be one of the first to make the subject of paperback picture books salon-worthy, or rather theory-able, and wrote his exam paper on the subject of "All about paperback picture books". Unfortunately, it is not possible to find out today how much essential information this thoroughly subjective thesis on the reception of pictures by small children contains, because the work lies neatly bound but unpublished in one of Helmut Spanner's paper cupboards - in the middle of a tasteful studio full of polychrome crayons that take up an entire wall like colourful birds.

If you talk to Helmut Spanner about the subject of cardboard picture books, it bursts out of him in a temper and even in a rage. Because Helmut Spanner lives the cardboard picture book. In 1976, while still a student, he was allowed to publish his first cardboard picture book. While the academy professors gave it a grade of "unsatisfactory", Meine ersten Sachen is still available today, 33 years later, and is one of Ravensburger Verlag's classics.

When Spanner today says sentences like "One's own recognition is the progress to speech" or how he conjures up the concept of time in his pictures, how he uses the example of concealed bodies to make clear that children do not initially add up what is missing when they see, but only see what is there - then one would like to jump up and give the great draughtsman and theorist a professorship for "learning to see pictures" - optionally to be attended by future illustrators, educators and programme makers.

Spanner has the gift of not only designing lexical life worlds in his picture books that give a baby and toddler the tools to experience the world. Spanner has also invented a basic pedagogical script thanks to his timeless style. His books are the basis of every good early reading experience. First Pictures, First Words is the gateway drug to picture recognition and abstraction. I am the Little Cat, finally available again, is cited in numerous papers as successful evidence of early childhood seeing and understanding.

When asked how Spanner comes up with this "wise" pictorial language, he answers mischievously and with his infectious laugh: It's not that he thinks about "every corner", what and how it works pedagogically, no, there's a lot of intuition involved. And a large portion of his own, preserved childishness". Spanner's books, which have sold 10 million copies, prove that one can be quite successful with a mixture of craftsmanship, a feeling for "what children need and want" and a lot of humour. From his first book in 1976 until today, he has remained loyal to his publisher, Ravensburger. It would never have occurred to him to leave all these years, he says, because Spanner is a family man and, after all, his books are also his babies, the publishing house the family.

Helmut Spanner could rest easy. On his successes over decades, in his beautiful old flat in the middle of Schwabing, together with his wife and their little cat. But he doesn't. He has written a lot of film music in recent years, mainly for the director Dominik Graf, and thus indulges his second great passion, music, without which he would not want to live a single day.

On the walls of his studio hang numerous detailed studies of bears and if you probe a little, he pulls wonderfully drawn tableaux of timeless beauty out of his drawers. Animals you want to stroke, so plushly does Spanner capture the fur; objects simple but striking and, in their perfection of craftsmanship, true design classics.

Frank Epple, who showed the first Spanner retrospective at the Jesuit College in Mindelheim until January, agrees.

But the fact that no one has yet come up with the idea of developing merchandising out of Spanner figures is somewhat astonishing. Seat cubes, Memories, and plush figures. Is there still music in here?

To you, dear Helmut, many more artistic and pedagogical hits when you celebrate your 60th birthday on 5 February.

Eselsohr, trade journal for children's and youth media, Christine Paxmann, 2011

The picture book millionaire

Augsburg His books are legend. The other day there were three 18-year-olds in his Schwabing studio - tall, cool men. But when they saw the book "I am the little cat", they became nostalgic. "With every picture, they could tell what was going to happen on the next page," says Helmut Spanner. These are moments of happiness for Germany's most successful picture book author, who was born 60 years ago today in Augsburg.

Ten million books by Helmut Spanner have been sold, but their author remained unknown. "Oh, it's you!" he often hears. The picture books are popular in countless families: "First pictures, first words", "Hello, little mouse", "Look here, what is the bear doing?" are some of the titles. Spanner specialises in the very young. "I only have three years," he knows. But these are crucial years for the children. In their brains, 50,000 synapses form every second. They learn incredibly fast - if they receive the right stimuli.

Helmut Spanner paints very simple pictures for them. "The step from image to reality has to be very small." Because the world of the toddler is the tangible. The flat picture on the paper should look as much the same as possible. "Once I left out the peel of a banana and a three-year-old saw a moon in it." Recognising painted images is the first step towards abstract thinking, Spanner emphasises.

He is artistically absorbed in this work, he "absolutely does not miss" the "serious" painting. "The cardboard picture book is underestimated, it really belongs in the feuilletons," says Helmut Spanner. He has intensively studied developmental psychology and derived the content and form of the elementary pictures from it.

At the Munich Art Academy, his first picture book, published by Ravensburger Verlag in 1976, was given the grade "unsatisfactory". It remains a classic to this day, 35 years on.Helmut Spanner wanted to become a teacher, but the school system was too rigid for him. When he decided to go freelance, his father disinherited him. Fortunately, his wife Christine, a primary school teacher who was involved in the concept of all the books, encouraged him.

Helmut Spanner smuggles a lot of wit into his childlike pictures. The mouse sits in the egg cup, the bear holds the telephone receiver upside down, the fire brigade feeds a giraffe wearing a bandage on its neck. Everywhere there is a story that wants to be told when you look at it. And because children do not yet have a sense of the past, a sequence of events is described in individual successive pictures: the hedgehog at the gap in the fence, the hedgehog behind the garden fence, an apple in the grass, an overview of the garden.

When his work at the drawing table gets too lonely, Helmut Spanner makes music.

As he did back then in the school band at Marktoberdorf grammar school. The future film director Dominik Graf went to school with him. Spanner composed film music for him for almost ten years. "We were a strong team." Spanner is particularly proud of the soundtrack for the film "Frau Bu lacht" (1995) for the 25th anniversary of Tatort, which is still considered the best from the TV crime series. Here, too, Helmut Spanner created a legend.

Augsburger Allgemeine, Alois Knoller, 2011

Anniversary

Picture book author Helmut Spanner turns 60!

With his works, children start out in the world of books: Helmut Spanner. The author, who has significantly shaped the genre of cardboard picture books, celebrates his 60th birthday on 5 February 2011. Titles such as "First Pictures, First Words" or "I am the Little Cat" are classics in German children's rooms. They have sold over 10 million copies. He has remained true to his principle since his first book: Draw objects as realistically as possible. Children should be able to grasp them. For his anniversary, "First Pictures, First Words" and "I am the Little Cat" are being published in special formats. Ravensburger also launches the peephole and three-disc book "Knowing pictures, naming words" as well as four buggy books.

Helmut Spanner was already involved with children's books during his studies. With fellow students at the Munich Art Academy, he founded the "Gruppe Bilderbuch" (Picture Book Group), which dealt with the analysis of content and form. They translated their initial findings into their own concepts. The collaboration with Ravensburger Buchverlag began with the development of a concept for cardboard picture books.

Helmut Spanner's drawings are intended to support children's mental and linguistic development. To this end, it is necessary for him to keep the level of abstraction between real object and two-dimensional picture as small as possible. This means: to depict objects of the child's environment reduced to the essential and realistically. This becomes particularly clear in the almost tangible plush of cuddly toys, the grain of wood or the sheen of plastic. In his books, Helmut Spanner is concerned with creating "speaking occasions". Pictures must tell stories and be comprehensible to children. In "I am the little cat" these are feelings such as care, curiosity, hunger or fear. The sales figures prove him right. His first book "My First Things" was published in 1976. "I am the little cat" followed in 1985 and became a bestseller with over 1 million copies sold. "Erste Bilder, erste Wörter" (First Pictures, First Words), published in 1993, has sold around 850,000 copies so far. To this day, he works exclusively for Ravensburger Buchverlag.

Helmut Spanner was born in Augsburg. Today he lives in Munich and Mindelheim. When he is not working on ideas for his books, he is busy with his second passion: music. In 1990, he set up a recording studio where he composes, arranges and produces music for films.

Press release, Ravensburger Verlag, 2011

A bestselling author hardly anyone knows by name

Children's literature

Helmut Spanner has sold over ten million books. Today, Saturday, he turns 60. "Quality and success don't have to be mutually exclusive," he thinks.

Nassenbeuren

Helmut Spanner wears jeans and a crumpled white shirt. His wife Christine serves herbal tea and sand cake. The atmosphere during the visit of the MZ is relaxed and homely, formality cannot even arise, especially since Spanner immediately starts bubbling away before the visitor can even ask the first question.

The cat with the dark brown, thick fur and the glowing eyes, who came to the Spanners a few years ago, lolls in front of the burning fireplace.

The breakthrough on the book market came with the "little cat".

A completely different cat played an important role in the life of the illustrator and children's book author. That was 30 years ago, when his second picture book was published, entitled: "I am the little cat". This cat was his breakthrough on the market. Since then, Spanner has sold over ten million books, more than Janosch, for example, ever managed.

Only: everyone knows Janosch, the name Spanner is virtually unknown. That's because Spanner draws for children between zero and three years old, and that's a target group that hardly anyone is interested in except young parents and the children themselves. Helmut Spanner's work does not exist in the feature pages, and publishers of literature for young people still do not take him seriously.

That pisses the artist off. Despite his economic success. And mainly because he considers it irresponsible that the toddler phase is so undervalued and treated with contempt by children's literature.

He notes that there are a lot of illustrators and publishers who do not know or do not take note of the child's way of perception. For many, the first priority is "to be able to realise themselves as artists" without taking into account the peculiarities of their little "readers". 

Spanner can lecture passionately for hours on brain research and developmental psychology to prove why precisely this phase of life is so infinitely important for thinking, language and the shaping of differentiated perception. And why he himself draws in just this way and not in any other way.

Ravensburger Verlag is dedicating an anniversary campaign to Spanner. His bestsellers, some of which have been in print again and again for 35 years and are beloved by children, prove that he is on the right track. Just now, on his 60th birthday today, Ravensburger Verlag has dedicated a special campaign to him.

"Quality and success don't have to be mutually exclusive," says Spanner provocatively. "Just because art doesn't sell doesn't automatically make it good." He sees himself as a doer, as someone who "delivers solid craftsmanship and doesn't play the artist. But I don't let anyone tell me what to do when it comes to painting. I'm a stubborn dog.

"Spanner grins as he says this, then laughs. He likes to laugh at all. He is full of energy, likes to get excited without seeming dogged.

Represented with originals in the "realm of fantasy

This year, Helmut Spanners original drawings can be seen for the second time in the exhibition "Im Reich der Phantasie". He considers the Mindelheim project to be extremely remarkable and unique in southern Germany. To be able to understand the differences between the original and the print is a revelation.

The Spanners commute between their flats in Munich's lively Türkenstraße and their mother-in-law's quiet house in Nassenbeuren, where the view sweeps unhindered over the linden avenue to the edge of the forest. They enjoy these contrasts and feel at home here as well as there.

The cat has risen in the meantime and struts gracefully out of the room. Spanner has now moved on to the subject of music and talks with his characteristic enthusiasm about his second occupation, composing and arranging film music, and about his collaboration with the director Dominik Graf. But that is another story. That will be told another time ... 

Mindelheimer Zeitung, Eva-Maria Frieder, 2011

The unknown bestselling author

Gersthofen - Which parents and grandparents do not know the well-known cardboard picture books "Hello, Little Mouse!", "The Kitchen Mouse", "First Pictures, First Words" and especially the classic "I am the Little Cat". More than ten million copies have been sold all over the world. Hardly anyone knows that the artist behind the endearing drawings is called Helmut Spanner and comes from Gersthofen.

Spanner was born in 1951 as an only child in Gersthofen and attended the Pestalozzi School there. His parents Hans Spanner and Frieda, née Pfiffner, lived at Augsburger Straße 39 at that time and first had a haulage business and then a taxi business. Many old-established Gersthofer still know the name "Auto Spanner" today. Josef Spanner, his uncle, was a coal merchant.

The 59-year-old fondly remembers the time in his hometown: "Behind Augsburger Straße in the direction of the railway line, there was nothing but meadow until Hirblingen. That's where Hermann Nettel and I liked to play." Nettel is a teacher at the secondary school in Gersthofen. Helmut Spanner still has a close friendship with him today.

Later, Spanner attended the arts grammar school in Marktoberdorf, where Bernhard Lehmann (teacher at the Paul Klee grammar school in Gersthofen) and he became friends. "He once told me later: You already knew back then at the age of 16 that you wanted to make picture books one day," the author recounts. Both were in contact about the forced labour exhibition, to which Helmut Spanner was able to contribute something from the family archive.

Social change should begin with children

In Munich, he took courses at the Academy of Fine Arts and founded the group Bilderbuch with a few students. "We wanted to change society and therefore we wanted to start with the children," says Spanner, still full of enthusiasm. Therefore, he dealt intensively with all facets of the picture book - in terms of content as well as artistically and psychologically.

Therein lies the secret of his success. Spanner does not paint just any colourful pictures that appeal to adults, but went to kindergartens and tested the effect of his pictures on the children themselves. "I want to make pictures comprehensible for the children. They have their first grasping experiences in nature, then they move on to culture and books. That's why the first books and drawings have to be explanatory."

In addition, Spanner questioned how the objects in his books are perceived by children. He therefore spent about one and a half years working on "I am the little cat" alone. He developed a concept and sent the cat through everyday situations that the children know. In doing so, he does not anthropomorphise the cat, so that the little viewers also learn something about the animal. "The children should be able to slip into the situations and tell stories about them themselves," says the author.

Already in 1981, the year of publication, 65,000 copies of this book were sold, and Spanner received literary prizes for it in Italy in 1982 and in Heidelberg in 2000. He has published a total of 20 book titles. Nevertheless, he deeply regrets that the cardboard picture book is not recognised in Germany and that this type of book hardly receives any public attention.

Spanner's second great passion is music: together with the German film and television director Dominik Graf, Spanner also made film music for TV productions such as for "Tatort", "Der Fahnder" and for feature films. "A day without piano or guitar is rare for me," he says.

Today he lives with his wife Christine, a primary school teacher, in a pretty studio flat in Munich- Schwabing. They have been happily married since 1975. Once a year he opens his studio and shows his work as part of the "Kunst im Karrée" campaign. Helmut Spanner also likes to come to Gersthofen from time to time to visit old friends. He is always amazed at how the town has developed.

www.helmut-spanner.de

Augsburger Allgemeine, Diana Deniz, 2010