Tag Britta Teckentrupp

The Swing

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The Swing
Britta Teckentrup
Prestel

This is an absolute jewel of a book: a poetic reflection on the passage of time, at the centre of which is a swing.

The swing stands on a hill overlooking the sea. Said swing had always been there, the narrator tells us ‘… it invited everyone to take a seat.’ It’s a place for meeting, for being alone, a place of joy and laughter; it’s also a place for big decisions and perhaps change – beginnings and endings: somewhere anything and everything is possible. There are pensive moments, playful moments and pour your heart out moments. It’s a place to contemplate and dream about the future.

Friends meet there and so do lovers. It might be a place from which to take flight …

Seasons come and seasons go, bringing with them changes – in the natural world and also in relationships.
Mia and her grandmother would stop and counting carefully, have twenty swings on their daily walk to school and even now as a grown up with a daughter of her own, Mia recalls that swinging and her beloved gran. Precious memories stay with us always.

Little by little the swing grows ever more creaky, battered by storms, until eventually nobody uses it and nobody fixes it. But then, years later, a young man and his son walked by. Another change – a vital one – takes place as the man and other people start a joint restoration …
Childhood, friendship, love and loss are portrayed in Britta’s meditative, exquisitely illustrated collage style scenes. It’s amazing how she communicates so much in what at first appear to be relatively simple, yet quietly powerful, pictures and narrative.

Tree

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Tree
Britta Teckentrup and Patricia Hegarty
Little Tiger Press
This glorious celebration of nature and the seasonal changes it brings is presented through the focus of a single apple tree standing in a forest.
I’m a huge fan of Britta Teckentrup’s work and in this instance she makes ingenious use of die-cuts that increase in number as we move towards midsummer and then decrease to the single owl’s look-out as midwinter comes around once more, disappearing completely in the final two spreads.
The story begins as the forest is gripped by the icy chill of midwinter; no animals are visible save the single owl peeping from its hole in the tree trunk and watching …

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As winter gradually gives way to spring, shoots begin to peep through, leaves unfurl and bear cubs frolic. Then slowly more animals appear, nesting birds and more can be seen in the tree’s branches:

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birdsong fills the air showing summer’s on its way with its bees, butterflies and ripening fruit.

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Then come the glowing colours of autumn and the animals start to prepare for the coming of another winter when once again it’s time to take shelter.
Not only do we follow scenes of the changing seasons but also the changes as day turns to night

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in this superbly crafted book.
Patricia Hegarty’s lyrical text takes the form of rhyming couplets that are a real pleasure to read aloud and have the effect of making the reader slow down to allow for listeners to savour not only the gorgeous scenes as they subtly change, but the words themselves.
One thing is certain, no matter what the season, this is a book to treasure.
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