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After a short period as a primary-school teacher, she studied psychology. Bette now teaches people how to write stories for picture books. Her other great passion is music. She sings and writes lyrics for the music that her partner composes. Westera is one of the Netherlands’ top poets for children. Together with illustrator Sylvia Weve, she created the poetry collections Doodgewoon (2014) and Uit elkaar (2019), which were showered with prizes.

Bette Westera

The notion behind Dead Simple is that the only certainty in our lives is death – and that we’d better get used to that idea. Writing about such a theme without resorting to clichés or pretension is no easy task, but Westera does a magnificent job.No matter what subject she explores – the existence of heaven, suicide, inherit­ance, mourning rituals in other cultures, epitaphs, funeral cards – every poem is a sublime combination of form, content and tone.The watery grave of “little Klaas, barely thirteen years old” sounds like a ballad, while the anaphoric repetition of “Never again” in “Never again is forever” has the force of a cry from the heart, and the mesmerising rhythm of “Sky Burial”suggests a mantra.Dead Simple is not a heavy or depress­ing book though, owing its lightness to Westera’s wicked sense of humour, as she proves herself a kindred spirit of Annie M.G. Schmidt.Illustrator Weve, too, calls on all kinds of registers, making inventive use of the varying page widths within the book. Cartoonish pictures – such as the family portrait with the skulls of distant ancestors in the foreground – alternate with more abstract images. Where the subject is too vast to be neatly depicted, such as the elusive nature of time, she paints rounded shapes and rough brushstrokes in earthy colours to suggest the circle of life. Dead Simple – this wonderful collection of poetry and illustrations is anything but.

'Dead Simple' is a book that will win prizes, a book you need to have.

This book’s magnificent design also makes it a winner: the cloth spine, three ribbon markers, pages that vary in width, and an elegant lay-out.

Book

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Assets

Doodgewoon

Unique, unorthodox and unflinching: this describes children’s writer Bette Westera and illustrator Sylvia Weve’s approach to death in all its aspects. These poems, rhymes and songs range from poignant to light-hearted in tone and invite the reader to recite them out loud. Weve’s outstanding, evocative illustrations are marked by their diver­sity of style, composition and atmos­phere, beautifully complementing the poems and completing the collection.

Dead Simple

How does a writer come up with an idea like that? A children’s book in which the main characters are residents of an old people’s home? And not only that, it’s a poetry collection! This is perhaps not the most obvious of choices. Fortunately there are creative and independent spirits around, like Westera and Weve, who dare to be different. A children’s bookshelf without the innovative and hilarious Scram! I’m Not Your Gran! would be incomplete.The wit and elegance of these rhyming stories, which joyfully present life in all of its rich variety, bring to mind the work of Annie M.G. Schmidt and are a high point in Westera’s writing career.The link between the past and the present is a particularly striking element of this book and lends an extra dimension to each of the poems. Behind each portrait of an old person, an ingenious system of fold-out pages conceals a portrait of their younger selves, so that you know ‘Mrs Van Veen from room number one’, ‘Mr Van Bemmelen from room eight’ (‘who’s as ugly as hate’) and Mr Zeybek from Turkey were all young once and dreamed of love and romance, successful careers, or a large brood of children.Illustrator Weve has also outdone herself in this book and was clearly motivated by a desire to experiment. The resulting illustrations reveal her background in graphic design. Using bold shapes and thirty different colours of ink, Weve has created artistic fold-out pictures that feature complete life stories in beautifully designed compositions and colour combinations. Humour is always present throughout this book too, as Weve employs her trademark over-the-top style.In short, Westera and Weve, who have previously collaborated to great effect, inspiring each other to artistic heights, have delighted their readers once again with this magnificent, superbly designed book.

The poems are all flawless […] Scram! I’m Not Your Gran! is the most original children’s poetry collection for years.

A visual spectacle of colour and ingenuity.

Children's books

Children’s author Bette Westera and illustrator Sylvia Weve have taken a unique and gently anarchic approach in these vibrant and powerful portraits of twelve old people, with their snappy rhymes and eloquent images. *Scram! I’m Not Your Gran!* demonstrates how craftsmanship and artistry can come together to produce an imaginative children’s book that playfully combines ethics and aesthetics, emotion and humour.

Scram! I’m Not Your Gran!

Grandma is becoming forgetful and this is really upsetting her, partly because her daughter keeps confronting her about it. After a broken leg and a period of considerable resistance from both grandmother and granddaughter, Grandma ends up in the Rozengaarde old folks’ home. Sofia finds this hard to come to terms with, but realises that it doesn’t mean the end of her warm relationship with her grandmother.The box full of memories that Sofia has ‘rescued’ from her grandmother’s house forms a bridge between the past and Grandma’s new life. Westera has Sofia get to know other residents of Rozengaarde so that we as readers, and Sofia herself, are prepared for the fact that a relationship is still possible even if the situation worsens. One of Sofia’s observations is indicative of the tone of the book: ‘The more things you forget, the more surprises you have.’ Sofia’s mother doesn’t come out of the book very well.She doesn’t understand much about either her own mother or her daughter. Most of all she wants to ‘sort everything out properly’, which actually means walking all over other people’s feelings. Fortunately, Sofia’s father has more understanding of the fact that ‘forgetting’ is a relative concept and that it can actually have its good points when things don’t go entirely according to plan. Westera writes sincerely, with original observations and humour. Her vivid writing style ensures that every reader is perfectly able to imagine his or her own Sofia and Grandma. Oma’s rommelkamer is Bette Westera’s best book yet.

With Grandma's Junk Room she has created an intimate and sensitive book about getting older and about the strong bond between a grandmother and her granddaughter. (…) Westera writes from the heart, with lots of original observations and humour.

An enjoyable reading book about a lively little girl and a kind grandmother.

Grandma is becoming forgetful and this is really upsetting her, partly because her daughter keeps confronting her about it. After a broken leg and a period of considerable resistance from both grandmother and granddaughter, Grandma ends up in the Rozengaarde old folks’ home. Sofia finds this hard to come to terms with, but realises that it doesn’t mean the end of her warm relationship with her grandmother.

Grandma’s Junk Room

Sadness, infatuation, cheating, new family structures — Westera writes with a light touch and often with humour, as in the poem about the goldfish dividing their time between him and her after a break-up. But we also find ourselves confronted with painful situations, for example, when a child speaks up who suddenly has to deal with two homes and extra parents. Would it have turned out differently if he had been nicer? If he had never stood on the chairs with his dirty shoes? That particular poem is called ‘Nonsense’, and Weve has blasted a huge pink cross through it — one of the two fluorescent colours that have been added to the printed palette. The graphic work by Bockting Design also stands out in other respects. The paper is folded to make each page a kind of loop, so the words and pictures can flow from spread to spread. This gives Weve ample opportunity to let loose with her expressive, flamboyant illustrations. Like the mother’s hand reaching out for her daughter on the next spread in a poem about a girl who can’t believe her parents were ever a couple. ‘They have nothing, absolutely nothing, / in common / except for / me.’The publishing house Gottmer has taken a daring approach by publishing poetry with such a strong focus on the design element. And it works — the poetry collections of Westera and Weve have the ‘wow factor’ and have found their way to a wide audience. Sometimes the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

Westera’s verses, which as always read so smoothly, and Weve’s elegant, relaxed signature style complement each other beautifully.

With her poems, Bette Westera makes you both laugh and cry.

Poetry

A boy who sees his dad kissing his teacher. A girl who finally gets the big (half-)brother she’s wanted for so long. Stepmothers who actually turn out to be okay. This poetry collection by Bette Westera and Sylvia Weve is about love, but about love that has failed, run aground or ended in separation. In these rhythmic verses, no subject remains undiscussed.

Breaking Up

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