Editor’s note: Jonna Björnstjerna's "The Tale of the Wonderful Rabbit Family" series, published by Guizhou People’s Publishing House (Unread), has been selected for BookDao's Q1 2023 Top 50 Children's Book List. On April 23rd, which also happened to be the 28th World Book and Copyright Day, BookDao invited Jonna to their live broadcast platform, BookDao Learning, to share her stories about "The Tale of the Wonderful Rabbit Family" series with all book club members of the Good Book Recommendation.

Jonna Björnstjerna has been scaring children since 2007 with her books about ghosts, trolls, monsters and whatever else goes bump in the night. Most of the time it is the family of the wonderful Rabbits that feature as the unfortunate protagonists, but sometimes Jonna writes about humans too. Jonna trained at Malmö Comic Art School in Sweden and at Central Saint Martins in London, UK.

Jonna has won multiple awards for her books. For example, her debut picture book The Tale of the Wonderful Rabbit Family and the Monster in the Forest was awarded the Bokjuryn prize (picture books) in 2007. The Sweetie Monster, another picture book in the same series, was the picture book category winner again in 2010. Bokjuryn Solna – Sundbyberg awarded her books The Ghost Train and The Spaceship first prize in 2019 and 2020. Her books are published in Sweden, China, Japan, Korea, Finland and Denmark.

Jonna has just moved back to Sweden after many years in the UK. She lives outside the town of Söderköping with husband, son and a large dog called Elmo.

At the end of this article, you can find the recorded video of the interview.

BookDao: Can you tell us more about the Tale of the Wonderful Rabbit Family and their adventures?

Jonna Björnstjerna: Absolutely! The Rabbit Family is the main character of the series that I have written, the stories specifically follow the youngest brother in the family, who is known as Little Brother. In each book, Little Brother encounters a scary figure, such as a monster, witch, or troll. Many of these scary figures are actually taken from Swedish folklore, but I have also included some original characters, like the ghost train in one of the books.

The overarching theme in the books is a classic hero's journey, where Little Brother must overcome evil forces by figuring out a way to solve the problem or overcome the threats. It's a journey that children can relate to and understand, and I believe it helps teach them important lessons about bravery, resilience, and problem-solving.

I’m going to show you one of my favourite - the spaceship. This time, Little Brother gets abducted by aliens.

In the book "The Spaceship", little brother and his family are stargazing at the observatory in the enchanted forest. Little brother wishes to meet real aliens, but his family laughs at him. While observing the moon, little brother is beamed up into a spaceship where the aliens examine him and make costumes to look like rabbits. Little brother is unconscious during this process.

When little brother wakes up, he doesn't remember being on the spaceship. His family gives him a tinfoil hat as a joke, but he thinks it looks nice and keeps it on. Later, little brother sees strange rabbits in the forest and realizes they are actually aliens dressed up. When his family goes home, little brother goes back and sees the aliens climb out of their rabbit costumes. He wants to take a picture of them to prove that aliens are real.

Little brother tries to take a picture of the aliens, but the flash goes off, alerting the aliens to his presence. They take him prisoner and bring him to their spaceship, which is in a cordoned off area in the forest. The aliens are stealing trees from the forest, but little brother tells them to stop. They threaten to hypnotize him with the alien queen if he doesn't stay quiet, and they put him in a space ship prison with other aliens from different planets. Little brother escapes by offering to take a picture of the prison guard, blinding him with the flash and allowing little brother to escape.

Little brother tries to find his way out of the spaceship, but he chooses the wrong way and bumps into the alien queen, who wants him as her butler. She tries to hypnotize him, but fortunately, Little Brother's tinfoil hat reflects the hypnosis ray back at the Alien Queen, putting her into a trance instead. Seizing the opportunity, Little Brother commands the hypnotized Queen to return the trees to their rightful place in the enchanted forest. Little brother leaves his camera on the spaceship and returns to his family to tell them about his adventure and show them pictures of the aliens, but they still don't believe him. However, little brother realizes that the most important thing was that he was able to save the trees of the forest.

BookDao: The Tale of the Wonderful Rabbit Family has been released up to the 9th book since 2007. Will there be any new books in this series?

Jonna Björnstjerna: Currently, I am working on the tenth book in the series which takes place in an enchanted castle within the forest. To capture the spirit of the medieval era, I have done a lot of research on medieval architecture, fashion, and customs of the time. I aim to capture the essence of a medieval village and a classic knight's tale adventure. In the story, little brother unintentionally becomes a knight.

BookDao: Can you explain your creative process and approach to designing your work as an author and illustrator?

Jonna Björnstjerna: As an author and illustrator, my creative process involves a lot of mind mapping to piece together the story. I like to think of the story as an engine, with loose parts at the beginning that eventually come together to make the engine spin. Once I find the pivotal cogwheel that clicks into place, I know I can proceed with the next step: writing the manuscript.

Afterwards, I collaborate with my editor, sending the manuscript back and forth several times until we are both satisfied with the story. However, the story continues to evolve even after the manuscript is complete, as I begin to work on the illustrations. When I see the text and images together, I may realize that some text needs to be added or removed to clarify the story.

I often sketch my ideas using whatever pen and paper are available. These sketches help me capture expressions and movements that I can later incorporate into my illustrations. For example, in the bottom right corner of one of my sketches, I drew an angry dragon climbing towards the protagonist, Little Brother. While I don't have the rooftops of the castle yet, I feel that I captured the movement of the dragon's body in the way I envisioned it.

This particular story revolves around a dragon who guards a castle and its treasure. While the dragon is typically tame and friendly, something has recently caused it to become very angry. Throughout the story, Little Brother will discover the reason behind the dragon's sudden change in behavior.

BookDao: What challenges did you encounter during the process of creating the illustrations for your work?

Jonna Björnstjerna: One of the biggest challenges I face is fitting the illustrations and text together on the page. While I tend to write a lot of text, picture books should have as little text as possible. This means I have to find a balance between creating big, eye-catching images and including enough text to convey the story on each page.

Typically, children's books are 32 pages long, but for this particular project, I asked the publishing company for 40 pages to give me the extra space I needed. Even with the extra pages, it's still a challenge to fit the text and images together on each page. In some cases, I've had to reduce the size of the images to make space for the text, or vice versa.

One example of this is a scene inside the enchanted castle, which is constantly moving to confuse invaders. I wanted to convey this sense of confusion in the illustration, creating a maze-like interior. However, this proved to be a difficult image to fit on the page, requiring a lot of cutting, pasting, and moving things around.

As I move towards the coloring process, I try to create a textured background to give the illustrations a hand-drawn feel. Overall, fitting the text and images together on each page is a significant challenge in my work as an author and illustrator.

BookDao: Do you create all of your illustrations by hand, and can you explain the process by which your hand-drawn illustrations are transformed into finished books?

Jonna Björnstjerna: I often work digitally, but I spend a lot of time trying to make my digital illustrations look hand-drawn. Once I have the ink drawings, I erase parts of them to create the white areas and then move on to coloring.

During the coloring process, I have to make decisions about what's important in the illustration and what needs to stand out in bright colors. Sometimes, I have to use bland colors for fun details to avoid confusing the viewer.

The cover of the book is always finished first, and in the case of my latest book, I knew enough about the story to create a cover featuring three knights, a fat pony, a confusing castle, and a dragon in the background. I created a variety of monsters and witches, in my latest book, Little Brother's grandmother starts a hotel near the scary part of the enchanted forest, and when she goes missing, Little Brother has to figure out which one of the guests has taken her. I've also created a collection of creatures in a separate book, including an enchanted castle that I'm currently working on.

Overall, my process involves a lot of digital illustration work along with careful decision-making about what to prioritize in each illustration.

BookDao: What led you to choose the rabbit family and Little Brother as the main character of this book?

Jonna Björnstjerna: Because my stories are centered around the theme of fear, and rabbits in literature are often portrayed as fearful creatures. Additionally, rabbits are naturally cautious animals because they have many predators in the forest and need to be careful. I believe that if I had chosen a large and dangerous animal as the main character, the contrast between the monster and the protagonist wouldn't have been as effective as it is with Little Brother.

BookDao: We've reached the end of our interview, but is there anything you would like to touch on before we finish?

Jonna Björnstjerna: I am deeply honored to have the opportunity to connect with Chinese readers and share my work with them. It means a great deal to me that you are interested in reading my books, and I am excited to introduce Little Brother to new readers. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.