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The wave became a flood: Pixi is the most successful and momentous picture book in history(s)
Photo: Markus Scholz/dpa
These things come at you everywhere. And they are always sticky from dirty children's hands, greasy, tattered, torn, painted after thousands of uses. In short: you are alive.
They must be related to these supposedly resealable packs of wet wipes, which conspicuously prefer the same habitats: in the net of the stroller, under the bed, next to the toilet, wedged in the box with the vegetable sticks, in drawers, washing machines, in the wet swim diaper and in those compartments Diaper bags that you didn't even know existed.
They spread faster than diaper rash. Pixis are incredibly fertile, reproduce uninhibitedly and stick. Forever. Even if you give them away by the box to other, hehehe, unsuspecting parents ("No, I don't want anything for it, I really don't, just take it"), they suddenly end up in your shoes again, on the car seat or under the doormat. And stick.
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Pixis behave like gremlins, are as cute and colorful as Smarties, as druggy as gummy bears, as subtle as AfD TikToks and as successful as their partner animal, the VW Beetle: affordable, easy to understand, practical, sensible and iconic. You read and read and read. They stick and stick and stick.
In one sentence: you just have to love them. With the emphasis on “must”. Parents have no choice.
The formula for success, which is probably somewhere in a safe at Carlsen Verlag, is: 10 times 10 times 24. The first Pixi book with the title “Miezekatzen” was published in Germany 70 years ago: older than the Internet and omnipresent like the boomers. In 1954, the Danish publisher Per Hjald Carlsen wanted to offer high-quality picture books as cheaply as possible. According to the Nobel Prize-worthy idea, every child should own a book and enjoy reading. He chose the hand-sized format of 10 x 10 centimeters and 24 pages and named it after the English "pixie" for goblin (which didn't even exist as a figure at the beginning, but the format has always stuck).
In principle, this was a service to public health, fair access to education and books, and the liberation of parents. Pixi, one could argue, was more long-lived as a revolutionary than Che Guevara: without any weapons or cigars. Carlsen could not have imagined that, as wealth grew, his wave of goodwill would turn into a flood that to this day causes children's rooms to disappear under books. With over 2,500 titles in millions of copies, it is probably the most successful and persistent picture book series.
The one-euro burger against the hunger for reading
In the consumer society, Pixis became something like the one-euro burger for quick reading cravings and a children's calming pill without risks and side effects (except that they stick). They work like the whining goods at the checkout and are the favorite souvenir of grandparents, neighbors, aunts, work colleagues (and parents who want to get rid of their Pixis). They are the story of the rabbit and the hedgehog that has become a book - no matter where you go as a father: Pixi is already there. In their image film on the Carlsen homepage they call it the “Everywhere Book,” which, sigh, is very true.
It only differs from the small Lego bricks everywhere in that it doesn't hurt when you step on it. There are so many nasty messages in the film. It is cheerfully claimed that the Pixis make getting up, getting dressed and eating more enjoyable. I have no idea who came up with this: But with a Pixi in their hand, my children don't do exactly what? Get up, get dressed, eat.
Like every trend, Pixi also produced its commercial spinoffs: Baby Pixi for small children, supposedly indestructible (but you don't know my babies), Maxi Pixi with the most successful titles again in large size (actually for nostalgic parents), Pixi knowledge for school children , a Pixi app, reading streams for lazy readers and collector markets. Once a product has its own Advent calendar, it has become a permanent fixture. A Pixi resembles a slice of toast, and not just in shape. It's not really filling, but it's versatile and the kids love it.
There's always one of those big plastic Pixi figures somewhere with a big bowl full of colorful squares in front of their stomach. I used to think it was terrible, I thought it was a sale of cultural assets, a grab bag, somehow insulting to the would-be educated bourgeois dad who really wanted his children to be interested in the glossy, thread-stitched arthouse editions.
Pixi, pixels, pimples
Mea culpa. Because that's just how we parents think and forget that the path to the so-called "good" book may be much easier if the first contact doesn't weigh ten kilos. Parents buy for their own bookshelf. Children chew Pixi. And that's okay. That's why I'm suppressing my allergy to the sugary, ideal world of the Conni series, for example. I understand that this gives children security, this feeling that everything will be okay, even if it's for ten minutes, a Pixi moment.
You don't necessarily have to get stuck with the Knax comic from the Sparkasse afterwards. According to the parents' calculations, whoever gets hooked on Pixi will eventually get along with Tintin, work his way up to Asterix via the Disney and Marvel detour, etc., etc. Until the images are completely replaced by verbal images, somewhere between Michael End and Harry Potter, only to be rediscovered at the highest level, for example in graphic novels by Craig Thompson.
A dream? No, Pixi is a good start, the squaring of parents' hopes of reading in children's hands. They are like the first step in every child's media career: first Pixi, then Pixel, finally Pimple.
It's stupid that the advertising claim "square, practical, good" has already been used for a chocolate. Because it goes perfectly with Pixi and Pixi is much healthier in comparison. Sometimes even sweeter.
Pixi just sticks. In life. Either way.
Therefore: thank you for (almost) everything, congratulations on your seventieth! Stay the way you are. That means: never grow up. But don't shake my hand: you're stuck.