Not only does she look happy, she is also downright fun and lively. When the 42-year-old Katja Frixe reports enthusiastically about her books, you can hardly keep up. She tells so quickly and energetically. Her 15 children's books are written just as lively. They tell of a cheeky witch, a talking book, a magical village and a bookstore full of mysterious books. Katja Frixe loves playing with fantasy elements that secretly sneak into a realistic children's world. And when things happen in their books that otherwise only exist in dreams or in fairy tales, their little readers take such magical moments with them into their everyday lives.

A school class, for example, was enthusiastic when the author read from her children's book “I am (d) a book, get me out of here”. A talking book in it is itself the narrator and hero of the events, and a lot of strange things and crazy stories have happened since this book appeared in the book in a school. The teachers can't believe their eyes, some even believe that it is haunted. And it comes across so cheeky and at the same time realistic that the school class in which Katja Frixe had read from this book took her book at face value and treated it like a speaking, lively friend. Books can't get any closer to children.

Today Katja Frixe lives again in the village where she grew up. As she says, it was a sheltered childhood, but it was associated with a lot of freedom, for example when playing outside in the forest, in the meadows and by the river. As a child she read “super happy and super a lot”, and she still has the collection of her old Pixi books. Every time a highlight was the visit with her mother in the bookstore "Buchwurm" in Braunschweig. There was a small gallery with a rope ladder, upstairs you could snuggle up and browse. Astrid Lindgren and Christine Nöstlinger became little Katja's favorite authors. With their Madita and Bullerbü, Gretchen-Sackmeier and Franz stories, they have shaped their sense of wit, comedy and humor. And the girl has already written a lot,no fictional stories, however, but essays and letters to her friends.

The books have a life of their own

No wonder that Katja Frixe set a monument to her wonderful favorite bookstore from childhood with her series about the “magical dream bookstore”.

Little heroine Clara never feels alone in this bookstore with its bizarre owner Frau Eule, the rhyming cat Gustaf and the talking mirror.

What is more than exciting, however, is that here too the books lead a life of their own and every now and then quite briskly step out of line.

The wish bookstore series is Katja Frixes “Herzensreihe”, maybe also because the protagonist Clara also has a little bit of little Katja?

After studying pedagogy, Katja Frixe became a lecturer for children's literature until a literary agent friend encouraged her to try writing stories herself. She is grateful to her to this day, because she can’t imagine a better job. Although she was not successful from the start, Katja Frixe also had to take criticism for one of her books. She made this experience self-critical and humble - and also grateful for the publication of every new book. She still can’t believe that it’s now fifteen. And of course she continues to work in the small attic of her family house, in which she lives with her husband and her twins. Where, however, although she is a conscientious person,usually only gets her books finished “at the last minute”, as she says, and at the end often has “a lot of stress” to hand them in on time. What does she need to write? Neither coffee nor chocolate, just “concentration and disorder”.

Her latest book “Fuchsland” was a particular challenge for Katja Frixe, because for the first time she designed a completely fantastic world in it.

However, you don't feel that writing is “real work”, so many magical motifs are cleverly lined up next to each other.

With this she wants to fascinate the children on November 14th with the “Sunday stories” for the benefit of the FAZ donation project.

She is looking forward to this reading “how crazy”, as she says.

Not only because she loves talking to her readers, but also because it is finally possible to travel and perform live again.

“It will be,” she is sure, “a lot of fun”.