Helmut Spanner

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Helmut Spanner, 2007

Helmut Spanner (born February 5, 1951 in Augsburg ) is a German author of children's and picture books as well as a composer . He is best known for his picture book classics I am the little cat and First Pictures, First Words . The total circulation of his books is more than 11 million copies.

Professional background

Helmut Spanner in the studio, 2015

After graduating from the Musisches Gymnasium Marktoberdorf in Allgäu , he studied teaching for the grammar school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . Here he was a co-founder of the picture book group , which analyzed already published picture books in terms of content and artist. At the same time, new concepts for picture books were developed. In 1977, while still studying art, Helmut Spanner published his first cardboard picture book, My First Things , at Ravensburger , which is still on the market (as of 2016). His thesis was entitled All about the cardboard picture book . He has been working as a freelance picture book author for Ravensburger Buchverlag for 40 years now. 11.3 million of his books have been sold so far (as of 2016).

From 1990 to 2000 Spanner worked as a film composer with his own sound studio ; this resulted in joint works with his school friend, the director Dominik Graf . He lives and works in Munich and Nassenbeuren .

Psychological-artistic approach

The author sees himself as a service provider for children.

Motifs

His choice of motif, according to the author, is based on the fact that his target group, i.e. children up to the age of three, is “only about original, simple, existential things”. These should have a close relationship with the child's reality; adult selection criteria should not play a role. For example, Helmut Spanner fought in vain against the publisher's decision not to include a picture of a hairbrush in a certain book, but that of a comb. He gave both a pedagogical and an aesthetic justification: “Small children are not combed with a comb, but with a brush. In addition, the brush is simply more beautiful and interesting in terms of drawing. "

Helmut Spanner depicts time as a sequence of individual successive images: “the hedgehog at the gap in the fence, the hedgehog behind the garden fence, an apple in the grass, the garden at a glance.” His pictures encourage narration because they contain funny stories : "The mouse is in the egg cup, the bear is holding the phone the wrong way round, the fire brigade is feeding a giraffe that has a bandage on its neck."

Style and way of working

It is important to the author to pick up the children exactly where they are. For reasons of perception psychology , he bases his presentation on "emphasizing the essentials of the objects", the "spiritually important", and leaving out everything "that is not necessary and has no function". In a cup, says Helmut Spanner, the wall, the representation as a hollow body and the handle are essential, but a pattern is not; the latter could even lead to the child misjudging that it was essential for all cups and had to be learned as an element of the two-dimensional representation. He justifies his decision for a realistic style with the fact that his books are "often the first contact with a two-dimensional representation of the world", the "reduction of an object to line and surface". Helmut Spanner's target group comes from the gripping experience; visual perception only becomes leading at the end of the second year of life. The author starts from the gripping experience as a preliminary stage of purely abstract visual perception . The real, tactile object is nature, the depicted, only visually perceptible sign is culture. For the child these are initially different worlds, they have to learn the symbol again. To facilitate this the children, Helmut tries tensioner as close to the visual image to stay and not the mental image to orient. The free artistic style is a hindrance in this phase of life, because the child often cannot even recognize what is depicted. Helmut Spanner has already proven this empirically in his exam evidence for the drawing style of Dick Bruna .

Helmut Spanner does not use any graphics software to create his drawings , because he wants “an original”.

Cardboard picture books (selection)

  • 1977: my first things
  • 1981: I am the little cat
  • 1989: I am the little duck
  • 1990: Meow, meow!
  • 1993: First pictures, first words
  • 1999: My Bear Book (First Words, First Sentences)
  • 2002: red, green, yellow or blue?
  • 2004: Cuckoo, which animal is hiding here?
  • 2008: Feel Streifi!
  • 2013: Pull me out, here comes the ...!
  • 2015: Animal children, where are you?
  • 2016: who was hiding here?

Film music (selection)

Reception (selection)

Several of Helmut Spanner's cardboard picture books received attention from German and international experts.

His picture book classics My First Things , I'm the Little Cat and First Pictures First Words have been on the international market for decades and are in children's hands. 11.3 million of his books have been sold so far (as of 2016).

In the specialist magazine for children's and youth media Eselsohr , Christine Paxmann attributed the gift to Helmut Spanner of “not only designing lexical worlds in his picture books that give babies and toddlers the tools they need to experience the world.” The author has “thanks to his timeless style invented pedagogical script. ”His books are“ the basis of every good early reading experience ”. In the same magazine, Gisela Stottele saw Helmut Spanner as having "an essential part in the development and success" of the knowledge books for young children. She named his first books as examples of suitable first picture books and meant both the content and the presentation: They were handy cardboard books with ten to twelve pages made of solid material, "which clearly show an object or a small action on each page and painted with pure colors on a light background. "

Arleen Steen of Miami University singled out books with bears as particularly suitable for speaking purposes, as this character was connoted with security and trust. She recommended the English-language edition of Helmut Spanners What does the bear do? ( What's Teddy Bear Doing? ). The fold-out book shows typical actions of children on its twelve bear pictures, such as eating, painting, talking on the phone. These representations encouraged the children to tell stories to: " Readers . Tell what teddy bear is doing '" (translation: reader . Say what the bear makes) Eileen Tway to this information in her article The Resource Center in the journal Language Arts on, which aims to promote oral expression.

In an essay on the book with the very young, the psychologist L. Ferraud dealt with the steps of discovery on the way to books in children under three years of age. Using the example of the cardboard picture book Mon petit ours sait tout faire by Helmut Spanner, she shows that in this book, suitable for the second year of life, the objects are no longer presented in isolation, but are related to the environment. So the child can recognize things, animals and figures in a situation. A sequence of images is shown in an age-appropriate manner, which stand for themselves and do not yet result in a continuous action because they are not logically linked.

Group exhibitions

Awards

In 1982 he received the Premio critici in erba award for the book I am the little cat , which is awarded by children. For the same book he received the Leander 2000 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Literaturgarage: For the 40th anniversary - an interview with Helmut Spanner - Literatur Garage. In: literaturgarage.de. June 9, 2016, accessed July 30, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Helmut Spanner: All about the cardboard picture book. Munich, 1977.
  3. ↑ The film music. Helmut Spanner, accessed on December 10, 2011 : "... film music that was created together with the director and school friend Dominik Graf"
  4. ↑ Katrin Baumer: Helmut Spanner: "I am a service provider for children" - medien.bayern. In: mediennetzwerk-bayern.de. June 6, 2016, accessed July 30, 2016 .
  5. ↑ a b Alois Knoller on Helmut Spanner. In: Augsburger Allgemeine , number 29, February 5, 2011, p. 5.
  6. ↑ a b Manuela Frieß: Millions love his picture books. In: augsburger-allgemeine.de. November 27, 2015, accessed July 30, 2016 .
  7. ↑ a b c Christine Paxmann: Helmut Spanner - draftsman, educator, musician, birthday child. In: Eselsohr , 30th year, booklet 2, Reading Adventure GmbH Munich, 2011, ISSN  0178-0905 , p. 18.
  8. ↑ a b Gisela Stottele: All about cardboard. In: Eselsohr , Volume 27, Issue 2, Reading Adventure GmbH Munich, 2008, ISSN  0178-0905 , pp. 14–15.
  9. ^ Eileen Tway: The Resource Center (Book Review). In: Language Arts. National Council of Teachers of English, February 1, 1984, Volume 61, Issue 2, ISSN  0360-9170 , p. 198.
  10. ^ Eileen Tway: The Resource Center (Book Review). In: Language Arts. National Council of Teachers of English, February 1, 1984, Volume 61, Issue 2, ISSN  0360-9170 , pp. 195-199.
  11. ↑ L. Ferraud: Le livre chez les tout-petits In: Journal de pediatrie et de puericulture , Elsevier SAS, 1988, Volume 1, Issue 3, ISSN  0987-7983 , pp. 167-174 (French).
  12. ↑ Helmut Spanner: Mon petit ours sait tout faire. Editions Albin Michel, 1983, ISBN 2226017097
  13. ↑ a b c L. Ferraud: Le livre chez les tout-petits In: Journal de pediatrie et de puericulture , Elsevier SAS, 1988, Volume 1, Issue 3, ISSN  0987-7983 , p. 169 (French).
  14. ↑ Eva-Maria Frieder: "In the realm of fantasy". In: all-in.de. December 30, 2008, accessed September 12, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Juergen Gerner: In the Realm of Fantasy VII - Book illustrations for young and old - Mindelheim Museum - November 28, 2010 - February 20, 2011. In: im-reich-der-phantasie.de. November 28, 2010, accessed July 30, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Spanner, Helmut. In: Authors. Ravensburger AG, accessed on December 10, 2011 : "For" I am the little cat "he received the" Premio critici in erba "in Bologna."

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Spanner, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German children's book author
DATE OF BIRTH 5th February 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg