A VISIT WITH PETRA MATHERS

LINNEA HENDRICKSON

           When asked about her methods of working Petra replies that the text comes first.  Then she puts the writing aside for awhile before beginning work on the dummy.  She continues to work on the text, however, along with the pictures, often making small changes of a word or two right up until the end, playing with the balance of words and pictures.  Often an editor will suggest changes, and although sometimes, she says, the editor is wrong, "Often, deep down, I know something is not right, and I find some other way to change the book."

            It is not easy to find information about Petra Mathers.  She throws away the forms from publishers requesting biographical information. "That's so boring," she says.  Thus, it was with a real sense of adventure that I finally arrived, on a May morning that sparkled with rain and sunshine, at the driveway marked "Paradise."  Like her picture books, the house she shares with her author-photographer husband Michael Mathers is beautifully designed and arranged, and graced with wit and whimsy.  Here an egg white and yolk of Cararra marble, there a monster lurking in the seemingly abstract design of a rug.  A vivid poster of Lottie,  just arrived that morning, is posted on the refrigerator door with chicken magnets, complementing the bright red top of the kitchen table.  The art on the walls is the work of friends. Antiques, both rustic and elaborate, mingle with streamlined modern bookshelves.

            "The house was a compromise," says Petra.  "Michael loves the river and goes rowing every morning, but I love the ocean."  The views from the many windows, out through the trees and over the water are constantly changing and always beautiful.  Her upper level studio is uncluttered, light, and airy.

            Because she has just returned from visiting her parents in Germany, her large drawing board in the center of the room is empty, except for some tubes of water color paint and aluminum trays.  One wall holds a large panel with multiple drawings of Maria Theresa.

            "Why chickens?" I ask. "I can make them move, draw them to express feelings," Petra replies.  A recording of Bellini's Norma sits beside the CD player. "I mostly play opera," she says. "I like to work to music, especially when the work is coming together.  Sometimes I feel so happy here, I open the windows to let the sound out."

            Like the characters in her books, Petra seems content in her beautiful (and dust free) house, where she works and plays with words, dreams, imagination, love, line, color, and music (and manages her duster as well).  "Authors have to be very brave," she says.  She doesn't visit bookstores or schools.  As I leave, I notice the odd way a cluster of flowers has been planted right in the middle of the path.  Nothing, I decide, about Petra Mathers or her books will ever be boring. 

            Praised for their freshness, originality, subtlety, and genuine feeling, the picture books of Petra Mathers combine a flat, naive, folklike style with wit and a strong sense of design.  Neither sweet nor cute, the books have perhaps had greater popularity with reviewers and children's literature specialists than with a general public that may mistakenly feel they are too subtle and sophisticated to be appreciated by children.

            With her new series of books about Lottie and Herbie, Petra says, "I feel at last I have found my true voice.  These are ordinary stories about ordinary people and ordinary happenings."

           Lottie is good, resourceful, courageous, and she cares about people.  She cooks and keeps house.  "Lottie is my role model," says Petra.  "Even though it seems that I am inventing her, she already exists in all of us when we are at our best." The events in the Lottie and Herbie books are based on real life. "I have actually jumped from cooler to beach towel the way Lottie does.  Even though you live at the beach, you never remember how hot the sand can be."

            In Lottie's New Friend the reader also comes to identify with Herbie and his feeling of neglect.  "I love Lottie," says Petra, "and I absolutely adore Herbie.  He has truly captured my heart."  The stories in the Lottie and Herbie books are simple, the text is brief, and the small format and use of panels of pictures and boxes create an animation-like effect.  Gene Deitch, who did the animated version of Where the Wild Things Are, has expressed an interest in putting Herbie and Lottie on film.

            "All of my books are about love," Petra says.  Her characters are modest, sometimes eccentric, and often shy, but loving and brave in quiet ways.  Maria Theresa (1985), tells the story of housewifely, opera-loving Signora Rinaldo, who keeps chickens on the roof of her city apartment building; and the independent, adventurous hen, Maria Theresa, who flies the coop to find a life of adventure as a circus performer.  In Theodore and Mr. Balbini (1988), Mr. Balbini's life is transformed when his dog, Theodore, unexpectedly begins to talk and starts bossing him around.  But Theodore and Mr. Balbini, like Maria Theresa and Signora Rinaldo, find love, fulfillment and friendship in the end.

            Sophie and Lou (1991), perhaps Mathers's best known book, was, she says, one of the easiest to write.  Sophie is a shy homebody with a dust free house, but she is also very brave. She reads books about flying, and practices dancing while she watches from her window the new dance school that has opened across the street.  When Lou, her unnamed admirer, finally knocks on her door and asks her to dance, Sophie is ready.  "You bet," she says, and they dance out onto the lawn in the moonlight.

            Victor and Christabel (1993) involves art museum guard Victor, the sweet but strong Christabel, and evil cousin Anatole Fidibus.  Inspired by Vittore Carpaccio's 15th-century painting ¡°Saint Ursula's Dream,¡± it is a magical realistic tale of love and enchantment.  Kisses from Rosa (1995), the first of her books to be written, is a touching account of her own childhood experience of separation from her parents in postwar Germany.  Mathers has also illustrated numerous books written by others, including Alan Wade's I'm Flying, Verna Aardema's Borreguita and the Coyote, Karla Kuskin's Patchwork Island, and Mommy Go Away and I Need a Snake by Lynne Jonell.

           In all of her books, including those she has illustrated for other writers, Mathers creates stunning, highly original, surreal, richly detailed, illustrations that perfectly complement, enhance, and extend the stories.  Kisses from Rosa (1995), based on her own experience of being separated from her parents as a young child, is warm and richly detailed, and although it has humor and a bit of fantasy, is less fanciful and whimsical than her other books.  Especially in her illustrations of books by other writers, Mathers has experimented with variations in style, incorporating Mexican folk traditions in Borreguita and the Coyote (1991), techniques of the patchwork quilt in Patchwork Island (1994), early American folk traditions in Grandmother Bryant's Pocket (1996), and child-like colored pencil art in Mommy Go Away (1997), a departure from her usual pencil and watercolor technique. 

[Visit to Petra Mathers's home in Oregon in May 1998]