The Pinchers with Anders Sparring and Per Gustavsson

Anders Sparring and Per Gustavsson are the creative duo behind The Pinchers. Originally published in Swedish, the books have been translated into English by Julia Marshall and are published by Gecko Press.

About The Pinchers
The Pinchers is a funny chapter-book crime series about a well-behaved child who doesn’t fit into his family of criminals. It features a prison break, a diamond heist, and a lie that saves the day.

Theo is good at most things. He can almost count to a thousand, knows several French words, and can operate the washing machine. But he can’t lie or steal.

“You must try harder,” says his mother sternly.

The Pincher Family love to steal things. It’s what they are born for! Theo's heart sinks when his parents leave to visit the diamond exhibition. After breaking Grandma out of prison (his little sister needs someone to read her bedtime story), Theo sees no alternative but to stop his parents from stealing the diamond. His shout of “Stop! Police!” brings them only delight—Theo’s lie has shown he is a true Pincher.

A mix of adventure, silliness, and everyday family life, and with bright and funny illustrations, this is a perfect chapter book for beginning and reluctant readers.

Transcript

Interview Transcript

Nikki Gamble

In the reading corner today, I'm thrilled to talk to Anders Sparing and Per Gustafsson about their books, The Pinchers. These incredibly funny stories are about a family of robbers and a young boy named Theo who doesn't quite fit his family's values. 

They're published here in the UK by Gecko Press, but they are translated from Swedish,

First, let's welcome Anders and Per. How bad was my Swedish there?

Per Gustavsson

Oh, it's okay. 

Anders Sparring

Yeah, it was good, yeah. 

Per Gustavsson

My name doesn't work internationally. It’s *pare* not *per* like the cat. 

Anders Sparring

I'm used to being called Andrew when I go abroad, so I'm really happy. 

Nikki Gamble

Anders, I know that you have written a lot for television, and I've been looking up everything you've written. It seemed to me that most of your shows are based around family. Is that true?

Anders Sparring

 Yeah, that's true. But I don't think that that's a choice that I have made. It's more that most things that you make for children are based around families because that's the normal life for a child. Their reality is within the family If you work for really small children, the focus will be within the family. And when they grow, maybe the focus will be outside the family. So I think it's about the age of my audience, 

Nikki Gamble

I know you have an alter ego. You also do stand-up comedy, which must be the most difficult job in the world. 

Anders Sparring

Well, I must say it's not a job. It's a hobby. And it's not that difficult. It's all about technique, telling a story and practice. And you don't just go up on stage and try to be funny. You prepare yourself well. The key for me was to know what I was going to talk about thematically. So it's all about storytelling, I think. You have to rely on yourself that you think it's funny, and then hopefully, the audience will like it.

Nikki Gamble

I guess the biggest difference has to be immediate feedback. When you're on stage, one moment can affect the rest of that performance. Whereas writing a book, you don't get immediate feedback. 

Anders Sparring

No, that's the difficult part when I write books. When I'm in the middle of a chapter and I find something that I feel is really funny, I usually call Per, read it to him, and check if it's funny. Because that's what you do in stand-up. You don't go up to the big stage and just tell your jokes. You go down to the small cellars -  the open mic places - and you test your thing. It's, and that's what I do with my books as well;  I read it to pair. I read it to my wife and on occasions. I read it to my kids.

 Nikki Gamble

 So, as a writer, do you write in a way that allows readers to read straight off without preparation? Is it demand on you to make them, read it the right way?

Anders Sparring

Yeah. My main focus is on the parent who is reading it aloud, and I want it to be easy for them to read. There must be no misconceptions about whether they should emphasise this word or that word.

Sometimes, translators don't understand the joke or the value of the words. Then, I need to explain to them why I think this is funny. For example, in the new book, there's a scene in an Egyptian market, and I have written that an old family member of the Pincher family steals a pierogi filled with goat cheese from the market. My translator at Gecko said, "Well, it's not likely to pierogi with goat cheese in a market in Egypt." But I thought the idea of a pierogi with goat cheese was funnier than a piece of bread, so I fought to keep it there. Those small details are important to me. 

Nikki Gamble

Per, you are the illustrator of these books. I was reading your biography. I see also that you are on the Astrid Lindgren jury. So, you must have a really good insight into international children's books. 

Per Gustavsson

Yeah, I've been a jury member for four years, and this will be my fifth year. 

Nikki Gamble

It’s not always given to an author or illustrator. Sometimes it's an organization or an association, isn't it? 

Per Gustavsson

Yeah, it's true. Like this year it was the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. From Australia.

Nikki Gamble

 I was at Bologna to see that award being made, and of course, it is the UNESCO Decade of Indigenous Languages. So to have that award at this time, I thought, was really special,

Let’s talk about your illustration. I wondered whether growing up you were a comics reader.

 Per Gustavsson

Yeah, of course. I read a lot of comics and I drew some comics as well. Comics started again for me in the eighties with many Swedish magazines, new illustrators, and comic writers.  I was involved in that at that time. And I made my own comic strips. I learned how to tell a story by making one-page comics. When you want something to happen there’s a clearly defined, beginning, middle and end.

Nikki Gamble

I see a connection between the skill of writing a one-page comic and the delivery of the stand-up comedian Anders was talking about. And the delivery of the last frame or punchline. I think getting that last frame right is so challenging.

 Per Gustavsson

Yeah, interesting; I never thought of it that way, actually, but that's true. And as Anders said, it's about storytelling. That's the big problem, and it takes time to solve it - how to get to the end with smartness and some funny things happening.

Anders Sparring

I started doing standup comedy because of writing. But the challenge wasn't about the last frame. It was about the first frame, establishing a story as quickly as possible. I think most comic writers have more problems with the first frame than the last one. If you start a story in the right way, then it gets its own motor maybe you have a few choices about how to end it, but if you walk this path the right way, you will find a good way to end it.

Nikki Gamble

 That’s really interesting. 

Per, I wondered whether you like silent movies as well?

 Per Gustavsson

Why do you think so?

Nikki Gamble

Well, there was something in The Pinchers, that was reminiscent for me. 

 Per Gustavsson

I think the expression in my pictures is like a silent movie because I have to express the feelings and the funny sides of everything that happens in the story. So I have the same body expressions as those who made silent movies because you have to be clear about what you are looking for. We have scenes in the books where you can feel the silent movie comics. 

Anders Sparring

In every book, we have someplace where I say to Per, "Could we just remove the text and put in a comic strip instead?" because then the reader starts working with the other side of his brain, when they stop reading it and start trying to understand a comic. 

I watched a lot of silent movies when I was a child. I loved Charlie Chaplin. 

There was a great documentary about Buster Keaton and how basic humour works. You know the scene where he’s moving that big house on wheels along the train track, and there is a train coming? He manages to push the house away from the track and the train misses the house. But then he's on another track and the train comes from the opposite direction. So just when you think you are It's a BAM! You didn't see that coming. Super funny. 

Nikki Gamble

Those films are absolute genius

Anders Sparring

There’s another scene where he is taking a walk on the sidewalk, and he sees a banana. He takes a big jump to avoid it and falls into a hole. When I went to film school, we had a lecture from a Swedish comedy director, and he used this as an example of the formula for comedy. I think about that a lot.

 Per Gustavsson

I think the covers are slightly changed from the Swedish cover. There's a new typeface. When I saw it for the first time, I felt it was like  a poster from a silent movie, by the Marx Brother.

Nikki Gamble

I have to ask how did your partnership come about? 

 Per Gustavsson

Our publishing house asked me if I wanted to start a new book series and who I would like to work with.

At that time, we didn't know each other. We had met on a stage at a breakfast and books event. Anders was the one who interviewed all the illustrators and authors. We had a really good time on the stage. We laughed a lot.

So when I was asked who I wanted to work with, I said, "I want to work with that funny guy, Anders." 

Nikki Gamble

Fortunately, he wanted to work with you, too!

Anders Sparring

I was really happy when the publisher called and asked if I wanted to make a book series with Per Gustafsson. There was no hesitation.

Nikki Gamble

  It feels like the books are co-created rather than written and then illustrated. Would that be true?

 Anders Sparring

The idea of The Pinchers came up at the first meeting. The task was to make a book series that should be super funny and popular. At this time, the most popular books for children in Sweden were about young kids who solved crimes. So we just switched that and said, "Let's make it about young kids who commit crimes instead." And then we invented some terrible crimes and were just laughing. The idea of them stealing each other's socks for example, came up during that meeting.

Also, the name—the Swedish name—was decided on at that meeting. In Swedish, they are the Knik family, which means steal. We had an hour-long meeting.

Now, when we do a new book, we meet and discuss what it should be about thematically and who the main character should be because it could be either Theo or Ella. Then I start working and pitch the synopsis to Per. Then, I start writing the chapters. If Per gives me input, sometimes I do it the other way around, but the input is important and keeps me working.

 Per Gustavsson

But usually, Anders calls me up to read parts of the book, and he’s laughing out loud, so I know what's funny or not. 

Nikki Gamble

We currently have two Pinchers books in the UK: the Pinchers and the Diamond Heist and, most recently, the Pinchers and the Dog Chase. At the heart of both of these stories is the Pincher family. I wonder if we could just talk them through a little bit.

Anders Sparring

With Rob Pinscher, I thought we were entering a universe of robbers, a family who lives in deep criminality, and we needed to feel some warmth inside the family.

You can't leave Theo and Ellen with the feeling that nobody's taking care of them.  Somebody must make sure they are fed and brush their teeth at night. Rob is a really good father. Dramatically, that’s why he's there.  Rob wasn't a criminal in the beginning. He married Nick and became a criminal 

Nikki Gamble

That's interesting, too, because unlike, say, some of the Roald Dahl stories, where the child is isolated amongst these adults who are not very nice to the child, here you have a child who's different from the family but it's still very much part of it. 

 Per Gustavsson

Because they know that if they give him time, he will become a criminal. If they just give him love, he will also turn out to be a nice criminal.

Nikki Gamble

And then we’ve got Nick what should we know about her?

 Anders Sparring

It's important for her to keep the family tradition alive. She's the real mafia in the family. She's much more conservative than the father, and she's really a criminal down to the bone.

There's a joke around every name in Swedish (and in English). In Swedish, she's called Mama Fia, which you can say - Mafia.

Nikki Gamble

The two children are Ellen and Theo. Theo doesn't want to be a criminal, while Ellen is more in the family mould. 

Tell us a little bit about grandma. 

Anders Sparring

 The Diamond Heist is the second book, so, in Swedish, there's a book before that. When we got to the second book, I wanted to expand the family and also gain some insight into the prison. And who should fit better in prison than a grandmother? Since we're working with this reverse universe, we wanted the prison to be a nice place because, for many children, it's nice and cosy to go to their grandmother. And so now we needed to make the prison a cosy place because the grandmother was living there.

She's criminal down to her bone. She commits every crime except violence against other people.  She’s been stealing, doing big scams, she steals cars  and she has cookies that put you to sleep. She's Super duper criminal.

 Nikki Gamble

Now, here's a difficult question for you: If I were to try to convert one of them to being respectable and law-abiding, which one would be easiest to turn? 

Per Gustavsson

I think Rob because he has been living that life for a short while. He just fell in love with Nick and then became a criminal. So, if he fell out of love and maybe met another woman…

 Nikki Gamble

You don't think Ellen would because she's a child? 

 Anders Sparring

I was thinking that as well. Ellen is a child, and children are easier to shape. But, she's also super criminal down to the bone.It's a criminal matriarchy.

 Nikki Gamble

I wanted to talk a little bit about translation, which you've mentioned already. Are there any moments that you can remember where the translator came back to you with things that were very hard to translate?

 Anders Sparring

 The English book is the only book that we can easily read and check out how the translation looks. The books have been translated into Chinese, and there's no chance for us to understand what the book is saying. 

The names are the most difficult. And then maybe illustrators don't always understand the joke. So we may need to explain the jokes,

Per Gustavsson

It's interesting that so few of the translators mail Anders and ask about things because if I were a translator, I would think that it's important to have contact with an author. 

Nikki Gamble

There was a very interesting panel discussion about translation at the Bologna Book Fair this year. The translators discussed phrases and words they could find no translation for. I found that interesting because those words and phrases surely reflect the culture in which those books are written.

Per Gustavsson

 I went to a panel where they discussed a book I've written, and I wrote that a boy went into the woods (in Swedish). But there are so many English words for wood which aren't the same thing. So, it was an interesting discussion about just one word. 

Nikki Gamble

Are pictures universal? Can everybody understand them? Or do they also need some form of translation? Are they culturally specific?

Per Gustavsson

Probably in some ways, but I'm happy that they haven't excluded me from the books in Europe because that happens. A lot of people in Europe think that Swedish illustrators are too expressive. Their faces look too angry and too sad. I have had problems with that.

I made a book in China, and they emailed  me and asked, "Can you make the faces of the kids more pretty or cute?" The children were sitting up in a tree, horrified and very ugly because you are ugly when you're terrified. I told them, "No." I won't change that.

I know many Swedish illustrators who have been replaced by German illustrators because the publishers consider their pictures too grotesque or explicit. 

Nikki Gamble

But part of opening up the world through reading means giving children access to a whole range of illustrative styles. A British picturebook looks very different from an American picturebook. 

 Anders Sparring

Maybe in Sweden, the Pincher books are super mainstream. But if you read them in China, they are considered arty, making them less readable. Commercially, maybe it's better to change a little bit, to make the readers feel confident when they read and at home.

We were going on holiday to New York. We rented an Airbnb in Brooklyn. And on the other side of the street, there was this small, youth prison. So I took photos and sent them to Per.

Nikki Gamble

I suppose one of the things that I think about when I look at an illustration like this is that many of the illustrations throughout the book are character drawings, and they appear against the cream page.

This one is different. It’s full-colour to the edges and helps to establish where something is happening for young readers. I think the scene setting is quite important.

 Anders Sparring

I love that picture because it's good for storytelling. It tells the audience about how small the children are compared to the prison. And it also says something about how scared the guards are sitting up there in the tower. I think it's funny and it's poetic in a way. 

Per Gustavsson

When I am illustrating, I work with that part of my brain that doesn't have words. it's intuitive when I make a picture.

Anders Sparring

You work from the gut and not from the brain.

Nikki Gamble

It's important for children to hear that creativity doesn't have to be something that you think about really hard. It's what comes from inside you. 

Per Gustavsson

True. So true. I have a couple of workshops with kids, and that's part of the workshop. Just do it. Don't think. They think that I expect something from them—something special. I say, "There's nothing right or wrong here. Just do it. It's fun. 

Nikki Gamble

I have to say the colouring on this picture is beautiful. How do you colour your images? Do you do them by hand or digitally?"

Per Gustavsson

On the computer. I draw all the pictures with a pencil, then scan them and colour them digitally

 Nikki Gamble

in the dog chase. You introduce a new voice, and that is the voice of Sherlock himself. What's  his name in Swedish? 

 Anders Sparring

Snuten. It's slang for police. 

We had written two books, Sherlock in the books, but he was always silently standing there. He wasn't taking part in the stories, really. I wanted to show the audience that the dog may not see what you see because he's always positive. He does not understand the gravity of the situation he ends up in the dog chase. He thinks everything is fine, and there is humour in that situation.

But I also understood that this would make the book harder for beginners to read because we have two perspectives here. So we changed the font and the style of the text to tell the audience that this Sherlock’s diary we are seeing.

Nikki Gamble

I love the end, where the dogs are returned to their owners. And Sherlock  says, "Nobody owns me."

 Anders Sparring

That's a small homage to a Swedish writer called Åsa Lindeborg, who wrote a book titled Nobody Owns Me.

Nikki Gamble

That's a good sentiment to end on. It has been fascinating. I thoroughly recommend both of the books we have so far. I hope the others are coming as well. Have a lovely day.

 Anders Sparring and Per Gustavsson

Have a lovely day and nice meeting you.