"I was born in 1938 in Stockholm, Sweden, and I have been living there ever since. I love this city, built on some small islands between lake Mälaren and the sea. It’s a city with lots of water and trees and a lot of nature all around it.I lived and ...
"I was born in 1938 in Stockholm, Sweden, and I have been living there ever since. I love this city, built on some small islands between lake Mälaren and the sea. It’s a city with lots of water and trees and a lot of nature all around it.
I lived and went to school at the island Kungsholmen, just like my good friend and illustrator Lena Anderson. But our school was so big that we never met. I was the only child and got a lot of love and attention from my parents. Every night my father told me a story he had invented, often about my teddy bear, Nalle, and my toy monkey, Jakob, who flew away on my bed-carpet during the night.
Dad gave me lot of good children’s books, that he read aloud for Mum and me e.g. Pippi, Pooh, Nils Holgersson. I don’t know how he knew which books were the best ones, but he did. He also taught me to go to the library to find still more books. He took me often to museums and the opera, he was keen on culture, my dad. Besides he was interested in botany. We biked around in Sweden collecting wild flowers to examine and press. We also made a family magazine together. He was good at drawing, educated as a graphic designer, but he worked all his life as a principal assistant secretary at an office of the State, safer than being an artist.
I was also lucky enough to have some nice uncles and aunts. I often stayed with them when my mother was ill in multiple sclerosis. My aunts also told me stories about Nalle and Jakob, whom they knew very well. My uncles were amateur botanists and birdwatchers, we were often out in the woods together. One of my uncles even took me on a trip to Venice and told me a lot of its secrets.
I think all this love, attention, nature, and culture encouraged me a lot. I started to write even before I knew the letters. The sad thing was that nobody could read my stories. Writing was my best subject in school except for gymnastics. I was an eager letter writer. I corresponded with aunts, uncles, cousins and lots of friends. I even wrote to Tove Jansson, the author of my favourite books, about the Moomin trolls in Moomin Valley, books where I first discovered the language (I tried to copy her), quite different from Enid Blyton’s scanty choice of words. And Tove did answer my letter! Three pages about why I shouldn’t buy a living monkey!
I played much too long with my teddies and toy monkeys with friends with the same taste. Then I started to think of the future. Sooner or later, I thought, you’ll end up in Hollywood, and if Gene Kelly would get a gap in his ballet, I must be ready to fill that gap. So I learned tap dancing together with a friend. At that time no other kids went to those courses, just grown-ups, but never mind.
When school was over I cried, we had had so much fun together, what to do now?
I studied art history at the University for a while, but then I decided to become a graphic designer, just like my boyfriend. Dad thought it a good idea. That took three years. As holiday work I made layout at a ladies’ magazine, and that’s where I first met Lena Anderson. We got to be very good friends. This was in 1958.
After the education I went on with the layout work at different magazines, and soon Lena and I worked at the same magazine again. We both married and bought our families a row house each in the same street. Lena got a little baby from Korea, whom she called Nicolina, Nico for short. I didn’t want to have any babies.
When Jackie Kennedy married Onassis I had had enough of the ladies’ magazine. I took a degree in political science. Then I worked at a leftish magazine. There I started a children’s page and I also began to write articles of my own.
Suddenly I slipped on a banana-skin into children’s TV. I made documentaries and I also wrote stories, which Lena illustrated. Suddenly we had made 34 stories, one every week. And some of these stories became books.
Now both Lena and I were freelancers, which were much more fun. We had a working studio together, a small ex-tobacco-shop. Among other projects I was the editor of the children’s page in Sweden’s biggest morning paper. There Lena and I invented Linnea in 1976. She looks a bit like Nico, who, since early age, was very interested in planting and flowers and gardens.
Some publishers wanted us to make a book about Linnea. We chose one of them and started. We planted and planted, the little shop was filled with jars. We had to try everything out before we wrote about it. I can assure you, only a fraction of it ended up in the book, Linnea’ Windowsill Garden.
We made a lot of other books, articles, TV-programs and another Linnea book, Linnea’s Almanac, that took some years. During these years, I visited Paris and a big wonderful Monet exhibition there in 1980. I bought home books and found out that Monet was Lena’s favourite artist too. How to be able to work with Monet for a living? As soon as the almanac was ready we allowed ourselves to apply for scholarships to go to Giverny. And we got one each! We took Nico with us to Paris. We went to all the museums and several times to Monet’s garden in Giverny.
We decided that our Linnea was the perfect person to go to Monet’s garden. And Mr Bloom the perfect travel companion. We know him well and he is a very reliable person. In USA some eyebrows have been raised, but not in Sweden.
We didn’t dare to tell our publisher what we were working with, art wasn’t a subject for kids at that time. We didn’t tell them until we had made a dummy of the whole book. As graphic designers we always do the layout even before we draw and write. The publisher said “Hrm… a narrow subject for kids… looks sweet… the other Linnea books sold OK… perhaps people won’t notice the difference… so… yes”.
It took five years and many trips to Paris before the book was ready: Linnea in Monet’s Garden. I even studied French books about Monet. Everything Linnea experiences in the books is true. Lena, Nico, and I experienced every bit of it: Hotel Esmeralda, the picnic, Monet’s relative that we met in the garden. He even invited us to his home to go through his boxes of family photos from Monet’s time. Some are in the book.
The American publishers didn’t like Linnea at all, too personal. Our Swedish publisher had to start a company of their own, R&S Books, to get Linnea out in USA. Many years have passed, but Linnea is still with us. She gets letters and calls from all over the world. We try to answer them all. We made a film about her, but no more books. She is now translated into more than twenty languages, and she still supports us economically. We can now afford making new books without working with lots of other things to get an income. Thank you very much Linnea!
After Linnea I made a film (together with Maria Brännström) and a book about my teddy bears, Big Bear’s Book. Without them I had never been able to become a children’s book author. So thank you Nalle, Jakob, Big Bear and the others!
Among the children’s books my father gave me was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I could never forget that book. As a grown-up, I bought books about the author, Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson. I grew more and more interested in him and in the real Alice, Alice Liddell. I became a member of Lewis Carroll Society, and after my first conference with them in Oxford 1989, I decided to make a children’s book about Mr Dodgson and Alice Liddell. With my experiences of nice uncles it was easy for me to identify with Alice. Together with illustrator Inga-Karin Eriksson I spent four wonderful years in Alice’s company, often in Oxford. The result was The Other Alice. I also got lots of new exciting friends in England, Wales, USA, and Japan thanks to Carroll. So thank you Lewis Carroll!
And thank you Tove Jansson for answering my letter and encouraging me with more letters during my career! I’ll try to answer the children’s letters I get now.
I have just finished a book about Venice together with Inga-Karin, Vendela in Venice. It’s about the four golden horses in St Marc’s Bastilica and their thrilling history, that my uncle told me about when I was a child. Thank you Uncle Ragnar!
I am now a member of The Swedish Children’s Book Academy. We try to spoil children with books. That’s what my father did. Books give you a langugage to think with and they train your sense of empathy. Yes, thank you, Dad! Tack Pappa!
Now I’m finally going to end this, or I will sound like Gwyneth Paltrow."
Christina Björks books have been translated into more than 20 languages.
List of Publications – A Selection
Linnea Planterar/Linnea's Windowsill Garden 1978
Linus bakar och lagar/Elliot's Extraordinary Cookbook 1980
Linneas Årsbok/Linnea's Almanac 1982
Linnea i Målarens trädgård/Linnea in Monet’s Garden 1985
Store-Nalles bok 1989
Sagan om Alice i verkligheten/The Story of Alice and Her Oxford Wonderland 1993
Vendela i Venedig/Vendela in Venice 1999
Awards
1984 The Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis for Linneas Årsbok
1988 The Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis for Linnea i Målarens trädgård