Reiner Zimnik

I love it when I find a new illustrator & writer I love that I'd never heard of before and then it turns out that he's from my home country Germany! I stumbled across one of his books 'The Bear and the People' here in Vancouver, or rather on beautiful Mayne Island while camping. I had never been to Mayne Island before this summer and it was greaaaatttt! Of course I had to stick my head into the lovely bookshop there called 'Miners Bay Books'. It was a great little shop with tons of character and a really fantastic selection in all genres I have to say. Their picture book selection was quite unusual. I remember being pleasantly surprised at how many books they had that I'd never seen before. Among them were Maxfield Parrish's unique 'The Knave of Hearts" and Reiner Zimnik's reprint of said book, 'The Bear and the People'. While I didn't buy either of the books because I was camping and wanted to stay light, and probably also because my bookshelf has absolutely no more room on it at this point. :) I did note both books and illustrators, and have thus discovered the many amazing books by Reiner Zimnik.

There is something about pen drawings of German picture books that I can't quite put my finger on, but I can tell when looking at them that the person who did them was from Germany. Does this sound crazy? There is a certain aesthetic of line that seems to happen in a lot of them that I really appreciate. One of these is now the drawings of Reiner Zimnik. Searching around online for more of his work, one thing I couldn't help but notice what his fantastic ability to make interesting work for his book covers. I am in love with the original cover illustration for 'Der Angler/(The fisherman)'. Also note the different versions of his covers through the ages. Enjoy.

Oh, one more thing. I also found that this neat blog, 'The apple and the egg' did a post on one of his books 'The Snow Party', where you can see the entire pages of the inside of the book. Check it out here.