Interview with Anti Saar
Estonian children’s author Anti Saar lost his voice one time and then inadvertently found an award-winning writing career.
One winter he had a sore throat and lost his voice and he couldn’t read bedtime stories to his children, a nightly ritual that both he and his children enjoyed.
“I started to miss that and I thought why not try to write something for them and see how they receive it. And then I wrote some stories. And I let my wife read them aloud to them, so hiding myself as the author. I didn’t mention, I didn’t say once, that your dad has written this – just to get objective feedback from them,” he said, speaking ahead of his appearance at the 5th EU-China International Literary Festival.
The children enjoyed the stories written by this anonymous author so after he had earned their approval he decided to send them off to a children’s publisher to see if they might be interested in publishing them. They were, and soon some of his children’s books were winning prizes and being translated into several languages around the world. So, he says he lost his voice and found it — in a new way.
“Let’s just say that it was a happy experience and a happy experiment,” Saar said.
Saar’s initial forays into writing were in the very different field of academic writing on semiotics, the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
“It appeared that my style of writing, or my temperament perhaps, was not quite suitable for scientific writing, as my essays and my papers did not come out as the professors would have expected or imagined,” he said.
He then started writing fiction for adults but “as I was mentally still at those issues and those problems, which really fascinated me in the field of semiotics, then these first writings for adults turned out quite complicated,” he said.
The books were well received by critics, but he found a limited audience with his fiction writing for adults. He has now been writing for children for over a decade and still somehow approaches his writing for the younger readers from an academic and semiotic viewpoint, he said.
“My writing is quite the same, it might seem paradoxical, but I have found that children are better readers because they don’t ask superfluous questions, they don’t start to pick at the places where there is nothing to pick. They are, maybe, more generous,” he said.
“I am finding that to come to terms with them is much easier than with adults. My writing is about the same, but I have just found better readers. Because children never complain that my writing is too complicated. That has never happened.”
Saar is also a French-Estonian literary translator, which he said is a line of work that is complementary to his writing for children.
“One gives me a rest from the other and vice versa. And I think it’s good and important that while translating I am basically working with my own language. I translate from French but I am still formulating Estonian sentences – fluid, nice, correct Estonian sentences, meaning that while I’m not writing my own prose, I’m still keeping myself ‘fit’ in writing.”
He is sanguine about the future of physical books and feels that for all the debate over the past decade about how the digital era was going to wipe them out, children are still very much connecting with paper books. To encourage children to read, it starts with the reading habits of the adults, he said.
“Read yourself and make the children see that you are reading. And read aloud. I think that’s the most important thing, just to read to your children, and for the teachers as well to read to them. Let’s just forget for a while the grammar exercises, and let’s not check if the kid has recorded well the names of all the characters in a book. But let’s just read aloud for them, and they will start to find it curious and interesting. It will arise their curiosity. I think that’s the case.”
Anni’s Things
One of his most popular books is Anni’s Things, which is based on his daughter Eda as he felt he had to try to capture her world view when she became a toddler.
“When she was three years old or so she was developing, her language, so fast, her way of thinking changed so rapidly, and in such an interesting manner that I thought I cannot, I just cannot miss it. I must record it in some way or another. There are some parents who take photos, there are some parents who make documentaries. I thought I must try to do it in a written way,” he said.
“When she was three years old or so she was developing, her language, so fast, her way of thinking changed so rapidly, and in such an interesting manner that I thought I cannot, I just cannot miss it. I must record it in some way or another. There are some parents who take photos, there are some parents who make documentaries. I thought I must try to do it in a written way,” he said.
“This is a book about a three-year-old girl and about her things, things which are the most important and most dear to her. There are material things like a cup or a hat, and there are also more abstract things like a secret or a dream. And there are people among the things, like her brothers and her aunt.”
He found that her world was one of proper names and proper nouns.
“When you observe children, if you observe their mental worldview, you find this is the world of proper names, meaning that those very material things that you could align among the other material things without any difference, they are actually for her so unique and so special that you can shoot a line between this cup or this hat to the same row that her brother or a pet or a parent belongs, because this is the same, this is the same level,” he said.
“This is not yet a world of categories. This is a world of proper names and nouns. So this is the ideological start and the ideological overall concept of this book.”
To write for children he first had to find what in Estonia is known as a “carrot voice”, a child’s voice similar to those presented in some cartoons. And it was also critical to be able see the world from a child’s perspective. To do this, he goes down to their level – quite literally.
“You just have to lower yourself to their level, to kneel down. That’s basically all that you have to do and then you will see the world differently. That’s where you should start. Lower yourself to their level, just purely materially, and you will start to see things a bit differently, and then all the rest comes by itself.”
He advises all those who want to write for children to try adopting the “carrot voice” and to get down on their knees to see the world from a child’s vantage point.
“Once you have this notion or understanding that this is the right voice then it really goes in a very easy – well, perhaps not easy – but in a light and satisfying way. It’s not that hard. And the problems adults have very often tend to start to seem so ridiculous, so stupid. I think it’s healthy to try to do that. For everyone.”