Illustrator

Annemarie van Haeringen

Three-time Gouden Penseel winner Annemarie van Haeringen (b. 1959) studied under Thé Tjong-Khing at art school, but she learned most about the profession of illustration from her fellow artist Max Velthuijs. Since her debut in 1985, her work has evolved from detailed watercolour and ink illustrations to whimsical line drawings featuring a bold use of colour and plenty of space on the paper. Picture books form the core of Van Haeringen’s oeuvre. She often writes them herself, as well as illustrating, as in her award-winning Beer is op Vlinder (Bear Loves Butterfly) and Coco or the Little Black Dress.

Working mainly in ink and watercolors, she lets the outlines run to suggest action and speed. For Little Donkey and Jakkie’s Birthday she won the 2003 Austrian Children’s and Young Adult Book Prize. Van Haeringen is known for her bold use of color. Her own picture books are often based on fables. The Princess With the Long Hair, an entirely imaginary story, was awarded the most important Dutch prize for illustrators, the Golden Paintbrush, in 2000. She won the same prize the year before, with Malmok, and again in 2005 for Bear is on Butterfly. In 2003 she was awarded the Silver Slate Pencil for The Beginning of the Sea.

Wat dansen we heerlijk

Wat dansen we heerlijk

“That’s absolutely hopeless!” declare the animals, as they watch the rhinoceros dancing with the hippopotamus. And it’s true – the wild way these two thick-skinned creatures come crashing together and fling each other about doesn’t have much to do with dancing. But these aren’t just any old animals: they’re characters in a book by Toon Tellegen, a writer who has created a genre all of his own with his philosophical and absurdist animal stories.

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Papa, hoor je me?

Papa, hoor je me?

Polle is sitting beside his father’s dead body, giving him a lively and honest account of the events following his death: who’s been to visit, how strangely grown-ups talk about death and what’s going to happen at his funeral. He brings up memories of his father, both good ones and not such good ones. He’s even brave enough to say: ‘Sometimes, but hardly ever at all, I was sorry you were my dad.’

This may sound a little like the well-known Dutch pastime of breaking taboos, but this honesty is the true strength of this story by Tamara Bos, as both the dead father and his son are presented in a way that is very believable.

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Coco of het kleine zwarte jurkje

Coco of het kleine zwarte jurkje

Annemarie van Haeringen has captured the life of Coco Chanel in striking images and a sleek and elegant story. This biographical picture book is a perfect blend of fact and fiction.

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Die dag in augustus

Die dag in augustus

With a great eye for detail, children’s author Rindert Kromhout and illustrator Annemarie van Haeringen use words and pictures to tell a small but multi-faceted story about a devastating event in an Italian village. However, Die dag in augustus (That Day in August) is not just about how painfully unpredictable life can be. This is first and foremost a tale about how we need stories to survive and to live.

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Sneeuwwitje breit een monster

Sneeuwwitje breit een monster

Following the international success of Coco, or the Little Black Dress, Annemarie van Haeringen has created another gem with this sparkling ode to the imagination.

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De tuin van de walvis

De tuin van de walvis

The whale already has a fountain, but he’s missing a garden to go around it. So he writes to the grasshopper, who takes a huge pile of gardening equipment to the middle of the ocean and creates a pleasure garden on the whale’s back, full of hollyhocks, honeysuckle, and apple trees and “a shed with a little window with cobwebs and a door that sticks”.

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Siens hemel

Siens hemel

On the day Sien leaves, the sky is pitch black. The cloud from which this wonderfully beautiful picture book develops is also pitch black.

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Alle dieren drijven

Alle dieren drijven

Noah and his ark, God and his fury — the Bible story has been adapted thousands of times, but rarely as ingeniously as Gideon Samson has done in this book to accompany Annemarie van Haeringen’s pictures.

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En toen, Sheherazade, en toen?

En toen, Sheherazade, en toen?

The stories from The One Thousand and One Nights have their roots in the Indian, Persian and Arab cultures. They came about in the ninth century and have travelled all over the world. Imme Dros has made a personal selection from this colourful collection of stories, rewriting thirty-one tales in an impressive, smoothly flowing metre that begs to be read aloud. Annemarie van Haeringen has created expressive pictures with a suitably eastern atmosphere to accompany the stories.

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Laat een boodschap achter in het zand

Laat een boodschap achter in het zand

In the year when Bibi Dumon Tak’s non-fiction oeuvre won the Netherlands’ top prize for children’s literature, she also made her debut as a poet. That step is not as big as it might seem. The portraits of unusual animals in her non-fiction were practically poetry already, as a result of her unique way of observing the world.

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Beer is op Vlinder

Beer is op Vlinder

It’s hard to understand each other, particularly when love is involved. How do you put what you feel into words?

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Vandaag houd ik mijn spreekbeurt over de anaconda

Vandaag houd ik mijn spreekbeurt over de anaconda

Bibi Dumon Tak can do magic with words. Whether it’s facts, portraits or poetry, her language sparkles and shines. She uses that language mainly to write about the animal kingdom, tirelessly tweaking different genres to highlight animals’ unique characters.

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