Robber Chief Wrinklebeard has two cheeky sons and a very obedient daugh­ter. On his deathbed he gives his children the following advice: do what you want, steal anything from anyone, but never tickle a crocodile. Only his obedient daughter does as she’s told.

Deciding to create picture books by himself, without any intervention from a narrator, is perhaps the best decision Thé Tjong-Khing has made in his long career. This artist, whose every line speaks volumes, does not need any words at all.

In Hieronymus, an art-related picture book by Tjong-Khing, a young boy loses his hat, his backpack and his ball in the world of Hieronymus Bosch.

The princesses in De prinses en de paradijstuin (The Princess and the Paradise Garden) couldn’t care less about royal etiquette. Instead of marrying a prince, they’d rather have a swineherd or a stable lad. And when their eyes do happen to fall on a majestic specimen, they always seem to be lazy good-for-nothings or have bandy legs.

Thé Tjong-Khing’s Iris, a Novel for the Eye marked the peak of his career as a cartoonist. He and scriptwriter Lo Hartog van Banda were looking for a way to reach the hearts of the socially motivated young people of the late 1960s, who were growing up with comic strips and television. Khing’s drawings are therefore more dominant than Hartog van Banda’s texts.