"Attach Words to Action, Pictures to Text"

JÁNOS CS. TÓTH
Managing Director
Móra Publishing House

Sympathy must be the first that directs your glance to a book. That is of no common importance, as the twentieth and now even the twenty-first century was and is saturated with images, we are overwhelmed with visual signs. We are well aware that sympathy is but initial in an attachment, the first step of the customer towards possessing a volume. Books proffer themselves by captivating colours, by lines and letters of dynamic or pastel-like harmony. Colours are more intriguing if they are lively, lines will attract attention more if they guide the reader's eyes with a lulling motion. An illustration that helps reception can get very near to the written work, it tells the same story, only in another tongue, in that of visual expression. It is atmosphere and characterisation that connect the written and drawn idea. The illustrator's attitude can not be other than the humility of the artist: illustrations must not precede or supersede the message, on the contrary, their task is to place it in the floodlight. And this does not keep the way of representation from being sovereign and characteristic.

In the history of Móra Publishing House it was about the nineteensixties that book illustration attained a higher level, alongside with the upswing of graphic art in Hungary. The publishing of children's books also had its long-term debts to make up for, and it found the outstanding masters to perform this. Those artists laid aside the saccharine attitude of the earlier decades, instead they created a tradition by a new conception of graphic art. The sixties and the seventies provided unprecedented chances to artists: many of them got commissions to illustrate as many as 10-12 books and the same number of covers a year. That period was when, as the author Győző Határ put it, "a young poet could base a marriage on his first volume of verse". Book publishing had its heyday, though within a closed system which, in the absence of a real market, distorted the commercial values.

Graphic artists of those days produced masterpieces, and Móra Publishing House continues to regularly bring out a couple of those classic hits, now due as much to the excellence of the illustrations as to that of the written work. Károly Reich, retaining the harmony based on renascence tradition, conceived his pictures to László Arany's Fine Hungarian Folk Tales under the inspiration of the nimble and associative drawings of children. The lovely pink piglet with its curly tail smiles triumphantly in the tree, watching the tawny wolves that climb in vain one another's back, with the bald wolf boiled red beneath all of them. The artist achieved this effect with clean patterns, yet reflecting the essence of the widely known tale. Figures are revived in the same way from the cow that climbs the roof in A tale for Each Day and Panka walking the flowery meadow in Panka Goes to a Stroll by Ferenc Móra, to the boy with fur cap, the hero of Treasure Hunting Little Fur Coat, likewise by Móra. We have succeeded to offer our readers another pleasing volume, made up from the drawings of birds found in the artist's estate, each accompanied by a poem of our beloved poets; it's popularity is due mainly to the individual style of Károly Reich.

The illustrations made by László Réber seem to tell stories of their own, and yet they "only" develop further the stories written by his "co-author", Éva Janikovszky. His drawings in grotesque spirit are adequate counterparts to her books that handle the forms of human behaviour and the perplexity of child-adult relation with sympathy and indulgence. The book Who Does This Kid Take After? has grown a classic literary and graphic work over the last thirty years, due to the childishly naive, yet adultly irrational outlook of the writer and the illustrator. Looking at Réber's pictures we can "read" the story behind them, like we may follow an action on the TV screen after turning down the sound. A characteristic means of the artist is the rhythmic repetition of motifs, which can be traced in its full-fledged form in Janikovszky's Happiness!. The juxtaposition of elongated figures as pictorial elements expresses an awkward situation in adolescent life, so it is self-evident in Sky-High Grass.
Endre Bálint, in many of his best art products, often used the technical means of application. He was one of the first to introduce this technique in Hungarian art. He made use of this in a one-time popular book meant for nursery-school children, Pussy Cat Music. "See, the candle burns when lit, Pretty girls are blowing it, Little soldier, blow it, blow, Let the people dance in a row!" This old Hungarian ditty inspired Endre Bálint to draw a picture where birds, candles, leaves and all can be arranged with the technique of montage. This is an example, at the same time, how a picture can be aesthetical and accessible to children without using baby talk.

The widely and lastingly popular book of verse by Sándor Weöres, Bóbita (Tuft) was illustrated by Gyula Hincz. The artist was able to remain within his authentic personal style, the rhythmical equilibrium and the calligraphy of lines so that children could also enjoy the pictures. Among our living contemporaries, Gabriella Hajnal made ingenious illustrations for the folk tale The White Mare's Son. The monotonous repetition of motifs (flowers, leaves, raindrops) constitutes an integral whole in the book and emanates an intriguing harmony. After a great many works of thirty-forty years ago, now Emma Henzelmann is illustrating a collection of folk tales The Girl that Dropped Pearls. The book features her expressive imagery and richly coloured surfaces in their specific originality. Ferenc Sajdik made illustrations for Éva Janikovszky's Encore, a book of ironical short stories, and for the novel The Ham-handed Wizard of Pál Békés, in his cartoonist's style. Another well-known and time-tested illustrator of children's books, Vera Zsoldos has recently drawn delightful pictures to a novel by the Russian Gaydar, Chook and Gek, making use of the possibilities of black, white and saturated grey and of dynamical lines.
But now let us cast a glance fifteen years back. At the turn of nineteeneighties and nineties, when we had a solid hope that everything would change for the better, Hungarian book graphics got into a mire. Certain artists, as István Engel-Tevan or Ádám Würtz for instance, went on making illustrations for eminent works of world literature. Publishing houses, however, that since 1950 had enjoyed a generous state subsidy, had to face a new obligation of making profit, which meant that several graphic pieces remained in the drawing folders. Market came first, cheap taste prevailed, mushy and gaudy pictures in American style sold best. Móra Publishing House, like many others, had to struggle hard to survive that period; the number of copies and of published works were drastically reduced, the latter were mostly reprints of earlier hits, so illustrators could rarely be engaged. In the course of the last seven-eight years Móra has gained much in strength, and now as many as a hundred titles appear in a year. That amount renders it possible to give regular commissions to a number of artists to illustrate newly written works or remakes. Móra Publishing House seems to be shaking off a shackle or two of the commercialised market, though the grip of the latter is and probably remains rather strong. Our endeavour to produce real value both in literature and in the pictorial world that accompanies it have resulted in mature works and in a number of prizes for our books.
Győző Vida's graphic pieces evoke the atmosphere of line cuts. Two collections, My First Book of Tales and King Greenbeard, are instances to this. As lino cut is not a quite recent technique, and it requires a meticulous care, Vida hardly gives a drawing out of his hands before it attains perfection. He is cautious with colours, avoids gaudiness, yet, if the contents demand it, a red patch may glow like an ember side by side with a green one. While he represents nature, objects and robes with even rows of short lines, human faces, heads and necklines seem to be spread out in plane, they are homogenously skin coloured. The two volumes mentioned above delight both customers and professionals, because the artist gave the picture editor a lot of initials, ornaments and emblematic patterns to make an organic unit out of them. The series My Library helps children to lay the foundation of their own library. It is Vida who makes the covers for the volumes, which is a professional challenge, as he must create a field of colours around vignettes drawn by a different colleague in each case, he must use the strengthening or softening effect of his colours so that they let the drawing live its own life, and still they are, though subdued, present. This series won justly the approval of the Hungarian Section of IBBY and both the artist and the publisher got their prize in 2003.

Krisztina Rényi was so deeply impressed by Mária Feuer's Dragon Tale, a book written for children, but recommendable also for grownups, that she decorated it with her finest illustrations ever. For the text, which contains elements of the oriental, namely the Indian world of myths, she executed adequate and even enlightening illustrations. Rényi composed well wrought, artistic surfaces. There are few artists these days capable of composing with her precision: she is lavish, luxurious and succinct at the same time. Sometimes she creates an open space where she lets birds, frogs, crickets, elephants and dragons roam at large, at other times she closes the motifs inside a tight circle or an oblong. Here she refines the smallest details till the peripheral line, there she leaves the figures space to move (elephants may run, birds may fly), yet she measures everything out with the utmost exactness, as if she were chiselling the surface of a relief, so calm and poised is her creative method. Her wonderfully arranged initials and ornaments remind us of the motives of fine Chinese porcelain. None but great discipline combined with easiness and a virtuoso skill of drawing can achieve this. She had a congenial partner in composing this book for Móra Publishing House, the typographer Johanna Bárd, who devoted her art to the task with the same intensity as the graphic artist did, and contributed largely to the creation of this book of moderate lyric elegance. It was not by chance that the Union of Hungarian Publishers and Booksellers declared it one of the most beautiful books in 2003.

The same board recognized the high level of István Damó's illustrations when it gave the title Beautiful Book, in 2003, to the volume of children's poems You Don't Say by Zsuzsa Muskát. Each of the sixty pages in the book are decorated with colour drawings. Damó is evidently fond of pastel colours, the poems are surrounded with them, which lends each pair of opposite pages a visual unity. Emotions as well as action or playful rhymes are all reflected in the drawings. There is no trace of nostalgia in the poems, which balance on the border-line of childhood and adulthood, though Damó puts a grownup's hat on the head of the marten, gives an apron to the turtle that has made a washing machine out of its shell, places a fool's cap on the worm's head, and dresses the parrot in a pair of chequered trousers. Children's heads are enlarged in a grotesque way so that the pink faces may express human feelings. Needless to say, the colours help the message to reach the young readers: the delight of green, the liveliness of mauve and the subtlety of light blue adapt themselves to the deliberately misshapen forms.
The same stylistic features mark the illustrations of Veronika Sinkó in her books published at Móra. The legends of Hungarian saints are contained in Our Lady's Slippers, whereas Angel Lambs comprises legendary folk tales, while István Komjáthy's Mathias Sagas is a collection of anecdotic tales about our great renascence king Mathias. Sinkó works in the style of medieval codex painters. The ancient and Christian symbols make the book emanate a certain sacral atmosphere. In her drawings the restrained lyricism may be interpreted also as a confession, though they serve the text faithfully. The reiterated figures have something ritual, something prayer-like about them. They remind one of the strength in frequently muttered prayers, in repeated motions, her drawings reflect the rhythm, the monotony and the ceremonial character of motifs. Her elongated figures evoke Gothic arches, they conceal the secret of Veronika Sinkó: elevation and esoteric spirit.
György Lipták's drawings contain something metaphysical, as it is attested in the book Grandpa in the Cherry Tree, published by Móra Publishing House. Those illustrations express his dialectics of constructive and destructive character. Lines are condensed here to streamlines, there they dissolve in smoky mist. We discern now and then organic, nay anthropomorphic forms, while the story is going on between grandpa and grandchild. They are exchanging views about death that is extremely difficult for a child to conceive. Oblivion and departing appear less dramatic or tragic than one would think, while we are looking at his drawings and read the text of Angela Nanetti, the excellent Italian writer.
It's no surprise that János Lackfi's book of poems The Stupid Grownup, illustrated by István Kalmár, also got the title Beautiful Book. The term grotesque may fit widely different types of pictorial works, and it is doubtlessly suitable for Kalmár's drawings. He draws strange, weird and distorted figures that are ridiculous and frightening at the same time. In the opening page of the verse group "Push-And-Pull" we see the hands and feet of four figures merge so that no one should be right in that whirling labyrinth.

What Edit Szalma drew for the series X Books of Móra Publishing House is slightly provocative, and definitely ironic at that. These books address teenagers about human relations, so the theme of love is inevitably there. "Laughter has no greater enemy than strong emotion" said Bergson. These writings, however, are humorous, yet expect deep emotional participation from the reader. It is just with this in mind that we may call the covers of Edit Szalma successful, because they combine the incidental in graffitis with the mouth line of a wide smile. The eye-catching colours and the ornamental motive of the waving page numbers are also subservient to stylistic unity. Edit Szalma found a neat solution for illustrating István Fekete's widely popular novel about the little fox, Vuk in colours. She broke away from the popular and somewhat treacly animation film, and created a book with a naive, true-to-nature world of pictures.
It is a rare occasion nowadays if Péter Kovács undertakes to illustrate a book for children, though he seems to have found pleasure in drawing pictures for Tibor Zalán's BE-LEEVE, the Rolling Bird, published by Móra, some twenty years ago. In his independent graphic pages Péter Kovács aims mainly at affecting our sensual world. He tries to set our inner self in motion so that we react to things we see according to our inner world. In Zalán's book he represented factual situations, yet in a way that makes the reader's creativity cooperate. In comparison with Kovács, Rozi Békés has got more commissions from Móra Publishing House. She has, among others books, illustrated a cycle of four teenage novels by the Swedish Henning Mankell. Her drawings at the head of each chapter remind one of the successful pieces of minimal art. On the colour covers she applies surrealistic means to catch the reader's eyes.
There are more artists that also merit a mention here for the books they have illustrated for Móra Publishing House. István Tóth decorated the book of R. L. Stevenson's verse for children with running heads in art nouveau style. Katalin Szegedi worked for the four volumes of Nina & Nicki in the series "Dotted Books", and for Bast Flowers, a collection of Norwegian folk tales. She gives the impression of being a simple onlooker, while she is shaping the story together with the author. The youngest talents also appear at Móra, Boglárka Paulovkin has illustrated Star-Picking Mario by Ottó Kiss, which won the Children's Book of the Year, Hungarian IBBY Prize in 2002. We must not forget Gabriella Gyólai, Máté Dobesch and Beatrix Papp, fresh graduates from the University of Applied Arts, who also have tried their hands in drawing for children.

Like any self-respecting publishing house, Móra aims at being an intellectual workshop that produces valuable books for readers in Hungarian. Books meant for children are inconceivable without pictures. Visual signs support reception and enhance the impact of the written work. It is the publisher's responsibility and content to find the right artist for the right book. Literary, technical and art editors, heirs to a rich tradition of the house, try their best to achieve that aim, together with the responsible editor.