Authors We Love, Children's Books, Guest Post, Picture Books

Curiosity and Imagination: A Conversation with Oliver Jeffers

By Scott Berkowitz / December 1, 2023 at 12:53 pm

Hardcover $26.99

Begin Again: How We Got Here and Where We Might Go – Our Human Story. So Far.

By Oliver Jeffers
Illustrator Oliver Jeffers

In Stock Online

Hardcover $26.99

The incomparable Oliver Jeffers has been giving us intriguing concepts to think about for years. Begin Again: How We Got Here and Where We Might Go — Our Human Story. So Far. is the bow tying his previous art and projects together. Jeffers’ artistry has touchings of anthropology, philosophy and at times, whimsy. Read this from front to back, back to front or a few spreads at a time and you’ll find your mind thinking and your soul nourished.

B&N: Curiosity and imagination are always at the center of your books. Begin Again is no exception, but it does have one major difference: this is the first book specified as all ages. Did this label change your process for creating the book?

Oliver Jeffers: Not entirely. I think the first and most difficult part of the bookmaking process for me is having something that warrants being a book. And the hard part of this work (for me anyway) happens when you’re not even aware you’re making a book yet. It’s a matter of observing and translating the world around you – filing things into interesting categories or seeing interesting patterns. Sometimes that comes out like Stuck– the humor in throwing increasingly larger items as a problem-solving technique. Sometimes that comes out like Begin Again – processing the trajectory, and the history of the human momentum. Once I know I’m making a book, the process stays fairly similar. I work out what needs to go on what page and keep going through it so that there are no stumbles between the word and picture relationship. Turns out the target audience I have in my mind is simply myself. Am I saying this as truly and simply as I can? If yes, then good. Move on. If no, then why, and what can be done to make it better?

B&N: You’re a visual artist and author/illustrator, creating art across multiple formats. What challenges do you run into in creating picture books versus when you’re creating collages, sculptures, or paintings?

Oliver Jeffers: There are a few things that jump to mind here. The first is structure. Anything that ends up being a book must follow a narrative structure, beginning, middle and end. Or a set of observations and questions that attempts to answer themselves, so even though Here We Are and Begin Again, aren’t stories, they still feel like they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The thumb nailing process of working out the structure of a book can be the most time-consuming part. Whereas with fine art (sculpture, painting or collage), there is no structure. There is a single thing, or a series of single things that have an open-ended communication with each other. There is no attempt at resolution, rather an attempt to insert the right sort of emotive question in the viewer’s mind of the imparting of a feeling. In terms of physicality, with the fine art works, the finished piece is the single object that has been created that you look at in the flesh. Whereas with book making, the object of the book is the finished piece, not any of whatever piece of paper or marks made with paint that go into its creation. It doesn’t matter how vibrant the pink you can make with actual paint. It’s how it translates to the printed page that counts.

B&N: Begin Again ponders the history of humanity and dreams of our future. What inspired this book?

This book came from 4 decades of a fairly unique upbringing and the quiet observation that came with that, that was sparked by two perspectives shifts and a chance encounter. From having observed, pretty much everywhere I went, people seem to have a mindset that the world is falling apart, to really thinking about whether it truly is (and concluding it’s not – I think simply for the first time in human history we are suddenly aware of ALL of the problems happening everywhere simultaneously, the subsequent feeling of being overwhelmed that comes with that bombardment, and the realisation that life, on the whole is better for almost everyone than it was one hundred years ago).

I started asking people everywhere I went why they felt the way they did, why they acted the way they did, and what it was they actually wanted. The results demonstrated to me that despite what seems to be a very polarised world, we all deep down want surprisingly similar things, and it’s not, after a little scrutiny, a list of possessions, but rather dignity and community. The two perspective shifts were this: explaining Northern Irish politics to well-educated friends across the Atlantic and realising how little most people know or cared about the history of our conflict, and that the way I spoke about the poignancy of this realisation was not dissimilar to how astronauts spoke about global geopolitics having seen the earth from the moon.

The second perspective shift was, having lived in the USA for 15 years and moving back to Northern Ireland by accident in 2020, observing the bitter divide of the USA during a toxic election campaign, I suddenly reconciled that the USA was where Northern Ireland was in the 1970s, where the identity of one group was based on the existence of a perceived enemy. ‘If they think it’s right, then it must be wrong!” I could see how self-harming it is to prioritise being ‘right’ rather than ‘wrong’ over being ‘better’ rather than ‘worse’. It was around then I had the chance encounter and could see the urgent need for humans to tell ourselves better stories. The chance encounter was with an old lady in Belfast in 2020 right before lockdown. I asked her if she thought the lockdown would last a long time. “I think so” she said. “You know for a minute there I thought this would remind me of the war. But back then, everyone tried to see how they could help. And now look around. Everyone just tries to see what they can get away with.” She was right. And I knew I needed to try and do something.

B&N: So many of your picture books, including What We’ll Build, Meanwhile Back on Earth, and now Begin Again, play with our ideas of humanity and the systems we have in place. What is it that you hope your books communicate to kids, parents and anyone else who might pick them up?

Oliver Jeffers: I suppose my books can be divided into two categories, fiction and non-fiction. From Here We Are through What We’ll Build and Meanwhile Back On Earth to Begin Again, these books came from the powerful realisation that comes with parenthood, that we all arrive on earth as raw potential, as untold stories yet to inherit or be taught our tastes and prejudices. With these non-fiction books, I hope they communicate how to be a good, contributing member of a functioning and healthy society, and the desire to want to be.