“Children have the freedom of not knowing and being able to ask, of marveling at and desiring everything”: Author-illustrator Isol on LOOSE THREADS
Enchanted Lion’s roving artist-interviewer Olivia Hertrick interviews Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Isol about her picture book Loose Threads. Inspired by the handicraft of a scarf she received on a trip to Palestine, Isol imagines the two sides of a scarf as two parallel worlds that exist right on top of each other: the front side represents the “ordinary” world inhabited by Leilah, her mom, and her grandma, who live in an orderly village where everything has its place; and the back side is the mysterious Other Side, a land that can only be visited in dreams, where unusual creatures are said to roam free…
Magic & the Grandmother
OH: I love that Leilah is introduced to the idea of the Other Side and the magic of the summer solstice by her own grandmother. Where did you get the inspiration for the grandmother figure?
Isol: I believe that there is something special that children and the elderly have in common, and that is that they both have time to listen to and tell stories. In one way or another, they both exist outside the social system’s demand to produce (children haven’t entered into it yet, and older people have already left it), and this liberates them from the daily preoccupation with the practical, the tangible, and “the necessary.” They can then pay attention to other things; they can observe, wonder, and listen.
I’ve known many older women to tell stories about ghosts and other supernatural things of which they seemed to have firsthand knowledge, or about which they had heard from someone in the family. My grandmother would say a few prayers and use a ribbon to cure “empacho” (a kind of indigestion), and this was a method that she taught to my aunt, who also believed in these mystical remedies. These are the sorts of things that tend to stay in the family and aren’t shared with just anyone. Just like a special recipe or a certain way of sewing. In my personal experience, I’ve had grandmothers and great aunts who took care of me a lot as a child, and they all had stories from their youth that they liked to tell me, as well as different beliefs they shared with me. My maternal grandmother also sewed very well and my mother inherited a bit of her talent.
The grandmother-grandchild relationship is very special to me. They are the extreme points of a family, one near the end of her life and one just at the beginning. I believe that this proximity to “the other place” gives the old person and the child a strong perception of certain things, if they pay attention to them.
Layered Worlds
OH: I love how Leilah’s adventure operates just underneath the awareness of her mother: her mother knows she is “up to something,” but is not really conscious of everything that Leilah does. Similarly, the Other Side is a world hidden just beyond Leilah. How did the concept of layered worlds evolve as you created the story?
Isol: In several of my books, I’ve explored the idea that we do not see many things, even though they are close to us, and how certain “misunderstandings” are maintained as beliefs that prevent us from seeing things we might otherwise see. When we think we need to show maturity and responsibility (the way Leilah’s mom feels, perhaps), we feel more secure if we have more certainties than doubts. In my stories, children often doubt a lot of what their elders tell them; they want to get to know the world based on their own judgment, and they hold themselves in high enough esteem to believe in their own vision, as happens here with Leilah. She tries to tell her mom what she thinks is really happening, and she sets out to find a solution so that her mom won’t be sad or annoyed anymore because her daughter keeps losing things.
I feel so much tenderness toward this girl’s intention to want to resolve things so that her mother won’t worry; this is a position that children at times are in, without their parents even realizing it: worrying about whether their parents see them as bad and taking the impossible task of making everything right again onto their own shoulders. But sometimes children don’t end up understanding what is really happening, and they invent magical or mysterious stories to explain what they can’t control. Actually, this is exactly the same thing that adults do, if you really think about it. I believe that this is the basis of many fairy tales or ghost stories, or of worlds that we don’t actually see, yet might perceive as something separate, along with everything we do not know or understand, like the reason why we are in this world to begin with, where we come from, and where we go when we die… I’d say that the Other Side is an unexplored place, which might be the place of Art, of the Subconscious, of Chaos…
When I found the topic of losing your things (something which was a problem for me in my childhood and which exasperated me), I was able to anchor the story in a detail of everyday life that’s close to home for most people––a conflict with which we can identity and through whose door we can enter the most fantastical part of the story. The themes that appeal to me range from the most everyday to the most mysterious, and I like to have them live together in my works.
Leilah’s Independence
OH: Leilah’s intrepid independence is one of my favorite parts of her character. On her own, she determines the cause of the problem, undertakes solving it, and when she realizes her mistake, she fixes it by herself. What ideas of children and childhood do you hold that lead you to give Leilah her own autonomy?
Isol: I like intrepid girls like Alice, Matilda, and Mafalda; they’re characters with personality traits that help us follow them through a story. I like characters that have questions and that want to change the world for the better. I like that they feel they have the power to change the world, and I also like that if they make a mistake, they’re not afraid to fix it. It seems to me to be a mark of intelligence to be able to reflect on your own actions and learn from them. Same goes for a sense of humor and happiness, which are necessary for taking risks, learning, and growing. Even though my characters worry, they never lose their energy to take action; they truly feel they’re important.
I believe that this has to do with the idea that my parents instilled in my brother and me: that we are capable of doing whatever we set our minds to. This view of us gave us the confidence to be brave as people and as artists (my brother is a musician). At the same time, the idea of rebelling against injustice and reactionary powers is something I’ve had in me since I was a child, understood as part of what it is to be a conscientious and caring human being. It’s also part of being an artist, to make art that shakes us from what is predictable and already tamed.
My child characters ask themselves about what is true and what is not (see Petit, the Monster; A Dog’s Life; It’s Useful to Have a Duck; and others) and challenge the certitudes of their parents. Children have the freedom of not knowing and being able to ask, of marveling at and desiring everything, which makes them very bright and means they’re constantly discovering new things. I find this very powerful and I use it as a personality trait of my characters, because it’s something that I admire and treasure deeply.
The Epilogue
OH: I love the epilogue, where we meet Lexis and Rolf. Not only is it a fun, humorous ending but it also validates Leilah’s point of view and gives credence to the idea that the world is a more intuitive, magical place. Do you as an artist embrace magic in the world? Or did this idea develop as you studied the two sides of the scarf?
Isol: I have a lot of fun thinking about how things might be different from the way we believe them to be, and how if we just change places slightly, we might be able to see things differently. There are many mysteries in this world, and this amazes me while also sometimes scaring me, like Leilah. How is it that we are in infinite space? How is it that nature can do such incredible things, with its millions of fungi, insects, minerals, and cycles? Even looking at an insect through a magnifying glass makes me dizzy: it looks like an alien or a prehistoric creature. The creatures in the depths of the sea, the human body itself… There is so much wonder and simultaneously so much ignorance around who we are, and we try to search for meaning because we as humans have this way of thinking.
Maybe if I were a scientist I would better understand how everything works, but even science doesn’t have answers for much of what has happened, nor what exists, and the truth is that the more I learn, the more I am amazed: fungi, communication between plants, how birds know when to migrate, how each species has its own way of organizing its environnment, its procreation… For me, this is magic enough, and strong magic, too.
I have a lot of respect for nature and everything that makes this world work the way it does. And at the same time, I’m also aware that I don’t know about many things that do exist, and there could perhaps be many more things that might exist, and I like to imagine these things. I find it exciting to think about a parallel reality, about transformations (like in Impossible or The Balloon), about wishes that might come true, and so on. I believe that this comes from my love for magical tales and the possibilities given by the words and images of picture books to invent a world.
But in my daily life, I’m pretty rational, not a mystic. It’s fun to think of things beyond reality, but only as a game or as a form of inspiration. It scares me when we give too much power to superstitious beliefs or mystical entities, because that can sometimes become an irrational excuse to avoid taking responsibility for your own life or actions. That being said, art and poetry have something to do with peeping out into “another world,” a world that’s at times intimate but yet very vast; this can give you vertigo at the same time as a feeling of being connected to something larger than yourself. In that regard, this book was important for me because I made it while we were still in the pandemic, and it was also during the time my dad was dying. So I think that ideas about all that can be lost and about the need for control and for air, too, might have occurred to me based on the situation I was in. Creating Loose Theads really helped me make it through that time.
Artistic Process
OH: You have found a perfect visual balance between the photographs of the scarf and the hand drawn characters. Can you tell us a little bit about your process for creating the images?
Isol: It was a little difficult to find this balance at first, because the shawl has a very bold design, with details and colors that competed with whatever I put on top. That’s why after a few attempts, I decided to use a single color for the characters, one that is fairly neutral, with black lines over a light brown color. I wanted the beauty of the embroidery to be appreciated and for the girl to stand out against the background. As I was scanning the shawl, I found different “landscapes” by looking at it from all angles. The fringe became a forest; I found a river with fish, a town, and, in the end, I started to see the shapes of the strange creatures that Leilah imagines on the reverse side. In the case of these animals, I added a few lines over the scan to further define them, so that readers would see them, too. It was like the game of finding shapes in the clouds or in water stains: a game I’m always playing. It was also very interesting to make illustrations starting from an object that already had so much graphic information; it was very fertile for generating new ideas that were different from the ones I always have. I wasn’t starting from a blank sheet of paper.
The Scarf
OH: Can you tell us a little bit about the experience of traveling to the West Bank and receiving this beautiful scarf?
Isol: I went in 2017 as a guest of the Tamer Institute, which is dedicated to the development and promotion of children’s literature. I held workshops for Palestinian authors and illustrators, librarians, and children.
It was a very intense and beautiful experience, because the people that I met there welcomed me with great kindness and were so grateful that I traveled there, as not many people can come. I was in Ramallah and Bethlehem, not in Gaza, because no one can enter there nowadays. Several of my books have been translated into Arabic, and I was surprised to see that the people there laughed a lot at my humor, and that even though we’re from different cultures, in the day-to-day we understood each other perfectly, or at least it was that way with the people I was with, men and women largely connected to the world of literature and education. The first few days, I felt a little overwhelmed, seeing the situation in which they’ve been living for so long and thinking about the history that this people carries with them, and the situation under which they live. But it made me happy to see how much they enjoyed the workshops, and I felt like this was a place where I could provide something, a little window out beyond their difficulties… There was a lot of enthusiasm for learning and creating, and a lot of respect. I worked with the ABC book (Daytime Visions, published in English by Enchanted Lion), and it was beautiful to see how the Arabic alphabet (which to me consists of mysterious drawings) played with the images they invented. Most of the women wore veils or shawls over their heads, but some did not, and just one woman in my workshop was completely covered, which piqued my curiosity, and she turned out to be very funny and talented! She laughed a lot. And so certain things surprised me that my prejudices hadn’t anticipated in that dimension.
One day, they took me to visit the Palestinian Museum, where there was an exhibit on embroidered garments; it was like a feast of clothing—marvelous! Some garments had a history that was clearly visible: those that the women used to wear at harvest; the ones with holes for breastfeeding; and those with a red thread that was used as a coded message about whether the woman was eager to find a husband. There were also examples of traditional embroidery that had been transformed into a symbol of Palestinian cultural identity and resistance. As an artist who makes pictures, this kind of narration through clothing was awe-inspiring to me. And that’s without even mentioning the meticulous and delicate craftsmanship of the embroidery. I also saw photos there of women embroidering as a group, across different generations, and how the oldest ones taught the youngest.
And since my hosts at the Tamer Institute saw how delighted I was during my visit, when I came back to Buenos Aires they sent me this shawl as a present, which now, some years later, has ended up as the fundamental backdrop to Loose Threads. I love that I was able to participate in some way in the virtuous cycle of this relationship between gifts and wonders made possible by each of our art.
Generations of Women: Wisdom & Handicraft
OH: We read in your note at the back of the book that Palestinian women hand-embroidered this traditional scarf. In the same way that Palestinian women have passed the knowledge to make this embroidery down through the generations, the grandmother imparts her knowledge of the magical world to Leilah. It is notable that the story features three generations of women: how did you come to craft the story in this way?
Isol: This arose from the very history of Palestinian embroidery and from what I saw at the museum, which is that it has always been women’s work. For a while I thought of a boy character, because I was also working on another book with a girl character and I wanted to do something different, but it seemed forced and odd to me. The truth is that while there are indeed some men who embroider, in my experience the women of the family are the ones who are associated with mending and sewing. And grandmothers and aunts are also the ones who tell supernatural stories. Maybe what we call “feminine intuition” has something to do with observing the world with a certain sensitivity and openness to what we feel and perceive beyond what is purely rational, with recipes and insights that aim to console, comfort, alleviate pain, even cure illnesses, passed down from one woman to the next across history.
LOOSE THREADS
Written & illustrated by Isol
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
An intrepid girl discovers the value of the tangled, knotty side of life in Loose Threads, a picture book inspired by a Palestinian scarf, from Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Isol.
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