Reporting from Harakka Island, Finland
Just 100 yards off the shores of Helsinki, past its embassies and marina, its cafes and upscale houses, lies Harakka Island.
There is not any bridge to Harakka; it have to be reached by boat — or by trudging over an ice sheet, when the temperatures plummet within the winter. There are not any vehicles, no bikes and no electrical scooters on the island. Even canines aren’t allowed.
But it’s a haven for a thriving group of artists, who lease studio house in what was a chemical analysis lab for the Finnish navy.
The acclaimed kids’s guide illustrator and writer Marika Maijala is one such artist. And it seems the island continues to be a spot of transformation and discovery.
Her studio on Harakka, a part of the island’s Artists’ House, is the place she wrote and illustrated “Rosie Runs,” which will likely be printed within the United States on Tuesday by Elsewhere Editions, in a translation by Mia Spangenberg. Though she had illustrated books by different authors earlier than, “Rosie Runs” was the primary guide she wrote. It follows a racing canine who escapes the racetrack in quest of a much bigger, kinder world.
In some ways, the story dovetails with Maijala’s personal life.
The interval earlier than Maijala arrived on Harakka was troublesome, personally and professionally, she stated. She was burned out and doubted her skills, regardless of encouragement from others.
But the island was a ballast for her. “I used to be a fairly apprehensive person,” she stated. “But this island forces one to struggle.”
In her first 12 months on Harakka, after creating tons of of drawings, “Rosie Runs” was born.
“The pictures emerged from my life,” Maijala stated. As she made extra of them, she remembered a Greyhound named Rosie a pal of hers had rescued in England. “Rosie had been abused, but she led a happy life afterward,” she stated. “The stories of Rosie and myself met.”
Maijala, 49, was raised on a farm in Haapajarvi, a small inland city in central Finland. She studied literature and labored as a graphic designer, together with for Finnish publishing firms.
She began illustrating kids’s books in 2004. Her breakthrough got here in 2008, when she earned the highest Finnish prize for youngsters’s books illustrators. That similar 12 months, Maijala and her companion on the time, the Finnish author Juha Virta, created a sequence a couple of woman named Sylvi Kepponen. Other kids’s guide illustrations adopted.
It’s no shock Maijala has devoted her life to creating books for youngsters. She respects them deeply, and appreciates how essential, sensible and serious-minded they are often.
“Children are a fine, valuable audience, and I want to make fine books for them,” Maijala stated. She desires of in the future making a guide with kids at a workshop.
After a while on Harakka, Maijala realized that she was a part of the island’s bigger group — a group that extends past her fellow artists to incorporate the island’s animals, its nature middle, the caretaker’s household, boaters and the residents of neighboring islands.
Here, she found a spot of pleasure, the place she might change concepts and create alongside others.
“I don’t know where my art ends and my life begins. The border is fleeting.”
Source: www.nytimes.com