The story of Jonna and Gorilla is about growing up with a parent who is not the norm. How one so often wishes that one’s parent could be more like all the others—and how one realizes, as the years pass, the advantages of being the child of someone who is an individual and walks their own path.
Hiroshi Ito was born in Tokyo, Japan, and graduated from Waseda University with a degree in education. “A good children’s book has depth, despite its simplicity. The reader should find something new every time they open the book. They will also see different aspects depending on their feelings or situation at that time.”
When I was a child, my best friend lived with about 15 people in a shared house, a big old villa. It had absolutely everything! There was a big garden with fruit trees, and a cosy treehouse.
When I created the character of Lionel, I tried to reconnect with the deep feelings of two- and three-year-olds, and I found myself confronting some contrasting and powerful emotions! It’s a very rich universe that you don’t always find in stories for toddlers, where things are often soft and kind.
“When I was eleven I used to pretend I was a boy a lot, and I was longing for love. All I wanted to do was to play-wrestle with my friend Michael. He had bleached hair and could play Nirvana songs on his guitar. But I was so tall and skinny it was hard to get boys interested. They liked the short and cute girls, not ones with cricket legs like me.”
As so often is the case, I was working on multiple stories about boats that weren’t really going anywhere, until Elephant appeared and ideas started to click. Once I figured out the storyline, I started pondering every beat of the story. What does it mean, what do I want to say? And how can I visualize this as clearly as possible?
For me, humour is important. It allows you to write about sad things that otherwise would be hard to deal with. I have always felt deeply for people
As a child I was obsessed with the idea of flying and of seeing the world from above. That was related to my passion for maps—and of books with maps in.
My previous book in Germany was a Western with a boy as the main character, so this time I wanted simply to tell an exciting story centred on a girl.
In their own way these ‘little’ books are as challenging as the much bigger books I’ve been doing in recent years. They don’t take as long because they don’t
