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7 successful products invented by children
by Michael Restin
She didn't want to make hidden object books, now she owns the genre
22.5.2025
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Ann-Kathrin Schäfer
It's hard to imagine a child's bedroom without Rotraut Susanne Berner's hidden object books. In this interview, she explains why this was never the plan, why bookseller Armin looks like her husband and what a good Wimmel cosmos has to do with a film script.
My children are lying on their stomachs on the floor with Rotraut Susanne Berner's large-format hidden object books in front of them. I love watching them sink into these colourful pictures. Sometimes I sink into them myself. Then we watch together as the kittens get bigger, the parrot takes off and the kindergarten is completed. We discover new details every time we look at them - even for the hundredth time.
Hidden object pictures are illustrations with countless figures, scenes and little stories. Rotraut Susanne Berner didn't invent them - but she took them a step further: she knitted several such hidden object pictures together to create a large narrative. Over several pages and volumes. With the village of Wimmlingen and 80 recurring characters, she has created a world that makes her one of the most successful children's book authors of our time.
You are currently working on a new book for the series, «Christmas in Wimmlingen». Now of all times, when everything is in bloom outside ...
Yes, I'm sitting here in late spring and letting it snow.
You already illustrated your very first Wimmelbuch, the winter book, in summer.
That was in the summer of 2003, one of the hottest summers ever! Every time I looked up from my winter pictures, I thought: «Where am I?» That was crazy.
Are you listening to Christmas music?
No, on the contrary. I consciously take breaks on my little terrace and enjoy the warm season.
Do you have any favourite characters?
The bookseller Armin is particularly close to my heart. I modelled him on my husband, who died in 2012. He looks exactly the same and will also play a role in the Christmas book.
Do you let your husband live on a bit like this?
Yes, although he still lives very much with me anyway. I live in the flat we share and am surrounded by his things. I work in the same shop where he used to exhibit illustrations. I've given his estate to the German Book and Writing Museum in Leipzig, along with my originals. So we are a bit together again.
Do you appear in Wimmlingen yourself?
I am represented in various characters, most likely in Susanne. What she has in common with me is that she constantly loses her hats and caps.
My child recently asked me where the trains leave the station. They take the liberty of not paying too much attention to proportions and perspectives. Why?
There are a lot of illogical things in the pictures, that's probably true. In terms of perspective, I don't get much right. The images are interlaced like on a theatre stage. I didn't want too much overlap to ensure legibility.
Header image: Ann-Kathrin Schäfer
Ann-Kathrin Schäfer
Editor freelance
simon.balissat@digitecgalaxus.chI'm really a journalist, but in recent years I've also been working more and more as a pound cake baker, family dog trainer and expert on diggers. My heart melts when I see my children laugh with tears of joy as they fall asleep blissfully next to each other in the evening. They give me inspiration to write every day - they've also shown me the difference between a wheel loader, an asphalt paver and a bulldozer.
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