Salla Savolainen gets Rudolf Koivu Prize for China illustrations

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By Milla Autio in Karkkila
     
      What do you know about what a Chinese children’s home looks like? Have you ever been in China?
      Unfortunately I haven’t", says Salla Savolainen, who on Thursday won the Rudolf Koivu Prize for her brilliant illustrations for the children’s book Pikku Xing ("Little Xing").
      The main character of the book is a little girl, whom Mr. Zhu finds on a foggy morning in front of a food store in a Chinese city. She gets new parents in Finland.
      "China, and adoption, were completely new to me."
     
Long icicles point down from the roof of Savolainen’s red cottage. The bushes in the yard are covered in a snowy hoar, and cats have been walking here and there. The view in Karkkila could not be more fairly-tale-like.
      "With a book whose events take place in Finland there is no need to think about what what a shop would look like, for instance", Savolainen says.
      But when she started to think about the illustrations to Little Xing’s story, she felt quite culturally isolated.
      "I am so accustomed to looking at Finnish faces."
      Fortunately Savolainen can pick up a Chinese satellite channel on the television in her cottage.
     
"What kinds of expressions do Chinese faces have? For instance, there is Mr. Zhu; men are difficult to draw in general, especially old men, so what about a Chinese old man?"
      Salla Savolainen found a TV documentary on tape about Chinese railway stations, and featuring two railway workers. It brought life to a page in the book about a train, where the passenger who is in the greatest hurry is being pushed in through the train’s window. Sacks and large baskets of eggs are being carried on the platform.
      "In the documentary a child was found at the station, and some greengrocer said, OK, I’ll take her home."
      The text of the book on Little Xing was written by Leena Virtanen, who herself has adopted a child from China. Three months had been reserved for making the illustrations, but "it was not nearly enough".
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.2.2005

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: Rudolf Koivu Prize given out for best illustrations

MILLA AUTIO / Helsingin Sanomat
milla.autio@hs.fi