Who wouldn't want to be bored like this for once?

In the car on the freeway while vehicles drive by in the other lanes in flower or wave shapes, as a red scribble fluff or purple star with orange dots and feelers on wheels?

Or when visiting the cemetery with grandma, while greenish creatures crawl out of the graves in front of crooked crosses and wave bones?

Admittedly, such a trip to grandfather's grave or a vacation trip can be pretty tough.

However, if you look at what the illustrator Juliane Pieper came up with for these scenes, you can hardly think of boredom.

With one exception: In the middle of the page from her picture book “Such aus!

My big wild book of decisions" adults talk - and what they tell each other

Fridtjof Küchemann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Juliane Pieper's illustrations have already been seen in the "New Yorker" or in the "taz", in books about strange reading creatures that somehow seem familiar to us, or about cooking spherical things.

She started with reduced line drawings, but she is also no stranger to the use of glittering stars and neon-colored slime in her artistic work.

Who ever told her that her illustrations were not for children?

In any case, Monika Osberghaus, publisher of Klett-Kinderbuch-Verlag, could not agree with this judgment and asked Juliane Pieper for a book about decisions.

The result is brightly colored, childishly crazy and a pleasure - to read aloud, but even more so in the conversations that arise with children from joint viewing.

"Find out!" is not just the title, but also an invitation that runs through the entire book: Which pet would be what, where could you go on vacation, what would paradise be like?

A pizza floats to the ground on a parachute, a garbage-eating plant grabs a Coke can, a huge woolly dog ​​protectively holds its paw in front of a girl who is sleepwalking on the balcony railing on the top floor: "Someone always catches me," says Juliane Pieper wrote: That would really be heavenly.

There are not only kittens, guinea pigs and rabbits to choose from as pets, but also a pterosaur,

Quickly to the monsters

From "there's no such thing" to "that nonsense" and "just imagine": What would a vacation in a submarine, in the jungle or in a chicken coop be like?

What would it mean to plant a jungle, visit grandma in heaven or invent a miracle cure?

What is really the most embarrassing: when adults kiss, when something falls down or when you misunderstand something?

And, in light of all the other embarrassments gathered on this page, isn't each one really that bad after all, certainly nothing special and maybe even a little bit funny from a distance?

Whether it's about the shape of the buttocks or catastrophes, about food or age: Juliane Pieper repeatedly shows the world of the possible as a small section of the imaginable.

Sure, there are no limits to the imagination, and that of the child viewer will time and time again leave the suggestions in the book excited and excited.

When the last page at the end deals with the question, "How would you like to fall asleep?", one may doubt whether a few of the options really promote the early night's sleep: One child has hung itself in the pig's tree with the bats, one sits down quickly back to the drums, and you can just see one of his feet peeking out from under the bed.

It quickly joined the monsters, who are traditionally busy there making it difficult for the children to fall asleep.

After all: Even on this scratchy page, Juliane Pieper conveys the reassuring message between nonsense and exaggeration: As it is, it's not that bad.

Juliane Pieper: "Choose your pick!" My big wild book of decisions

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Klett children's book, Leipzig 2022. 32 p., hardcover, €15.

From 4 years