Birgit Schössow Oma verbuddeln
[Burying Grandma]

Very few illustrators are as multi-talented as Hamburg’s Birgit Schössow. She does book covers and stage sets, cartoon films and film trailers; she works for newspapers and magazines; and she keeps on illustrating children’s picture books. After illustrating two picture books written by others she has now written and illustrated one of her own, with the impish and enticing title Oma verbuddeln (‘Burying Granny’).

Grannies play a central role not only in real life, but also in children’s literature. Not least as a mentor-type figure who has plenty of time for their grandchildren whilst being less emotionally enmeshed with them, and hence more inclined to take them and their needs seriously. Sometimes, however, they come across as irritating or needy, yet also as existentially indispensable. They are people that can provide children with unique experiences, both good and bad.

This certainly proves to be the case for the siblings Annie (12), Paul (11) and Mina (6) when they suddenly find themselves on their own following the death of their parents in an accident. A kind neighbour looks after the three of them while they all wait for ‘this Granny’ — their mother’s mother — to turn up. ‘This Granny’ is an extremely self-assured woman who has lived abroad for many years, who writes detective stories, and for some reason fell out with the children’s mother. There had been no contact between them for many years. ‘This Granny’ takes her three grandchildren off with her to her idyllic chalet on the Baltic coast, and it turns out that in fact she’s dead cool, generous, and sensitive as well. The children slowly get used to her, and before too long they feel thoroughly at home with her as also in their village and at school. But ‘all this dying’ just doesn’t stop. First: Lili, their cat, dies – and then, to everyone’s horror, their grandmother herself.

Birgit Schössow deploys much wit, humour and imagination in ensuring that this tragic death leads not to a catastrophe but to a positive outcome. In order to keep their grandmother’s death secret and thereby avoid being put in a home, the three children hit on an outlandish solution: they surreptitiously bury Granny in the garden. The problems that this act gives rise to are all resolved with the help of Lola Mattuschke, their former neighbour, together with Granny’s publisher Bruno, and various good friends.

One might advance two criticisms of Oma verbuddeln. Firstly, it could be said that the story is too optimistic, and hence kitschy; second, it could be argued that it doesn’t treat the theme of death and burial with sufficient seriousness. But both criticisms are completely without foundation! For one thing, Paul, the book’s narrator, specifically deals with the issue of kitsch in the context of the children’s idyllic life with their grandma, and thereby torpedoes that particular criticism. As for the second potential charge: death is in fact treated with great seriousness here, but with barely a hint of desolation or despair. For the children’s Granny manages to ignite courage and joie de vivre in them, plus a good measure of boldness, and a great deal of hope.

Creative and pragmatic solutions are the key element here. And the fact that the solutions embraced by the children – though highly unconventional! –  come across to us as convincing, is all due to Birgit Schössow’s empathetic but also deliberately catchy narrative style. In accordance with his age, Paul treats grief and pain in a slightly ham-fisted and slightly comical way, while at the same time his puns and plays on words give a sharp edge to his narrative.

‘All das Gesterbe’ (‘All this bloody dying’) – this phrase of Schössow’s is a simple but brilliant counterpart to Andreas Steinhöfel’s touching term ‘Herzgebreche’ (‘heartbreak and all that’) in his 2009 Rico and Oskar book Rico, Oskar und das Herzgebreche. The flurry of deaths turns the children’s lives upside down, but it certainly doesn’t strike them dumb. Cascades of snappy turns of phrase repeatedly make for a relaxed ambience throughout the book; by reporting everything as though he were writing a comedy detective story, Paul is simply following in the footsteps of his grandmother — who, so it turns out at the end, had already prefigured her own burial in the garden.

Ever since Peter Härtling’s 1975 novel Oma (‘Granny’), disease and death and the demise of grandparents have played an ever-increasing part in German-language children’s literature. It is a topic of concern always and everywhere throughout the world; one that upsets and bothers children but which they must somehow learn to deal with. Not least with the help of stories. But the topic has rarely been handled with as much invigorating flair as in Birgit Schössow’s Oma verbuddeln, thanks not least to the numerous spirited and original illustrations by her that accompany the text.