The making of a silent book:
Mila Yaneva on На път
and Bulgarian reading culture
На път, which translates from Bulgarian to "On the way", is a silent book that celebrates all the different ways we can travel. In this interview, artist Mila Yaneva shares her inspiration for the book, her creative process and some thoughts about the reading culture in Bulgaria.
Samples of Milas books and illustration work from her webpage
-I paint with acrylic ink. I love watercolour textures and working with the fluidity of the colors. But it is so difficult, every time you make a mistake, you kind of ruin it all and have to start all over again, which can be really tiring! So every time, I think “no more watercolor, next time I’ll be using gouache!”... but I keep coming back to the watercolors, the artist laughs.
Artist and illustrator Mila Yaneva is based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has a Bachelor’s degree in illustration and bookdesign from The National Academy of Art in Bulgaria, and a Master’s degree in graphic storytelling from LUCA School of Arts in Brussels. Mila works as a freelance artist and illustrator, and also teaches illustration at the National Academy of Arts.
На път is a silent book that celebrates travel. Mila shares that she started the book during Covid. -Most importantly, I just felt the need to draw during those difficult times, she says. I just wanted to feel the colors on the pages. But because of Covid, I also longed for travelling, which I could no longer do. So my imagination started to run: What if I travelled with this? What if I travelled with that?
The places pictured in the book are both specific and imagined. One full spread shows the train station in Burgas, others are just places. - I wanted everyone to be able to find their place in this book. Like the scenes with the fastmoving trains, in Bulgaria we don’t have trains like that, but I wanted to make it a different experience from the other means of transport. This way, the book can feel both place-specific and universal at the same time.
- I instinctively get the feeling of which colors will go well together
For readers of На път, the use of color is really striking. There is very little grey, even in motifs that might be grey in real life, like the double spread of the airport. Mila explains that the reason behind the stunning pink hues in that spread is that she imagined a sunrise over the airport. – I was sitting in a yard making this book, surrounded by green and fresh colors. And I really like colors, especially bright colors, spring colors. I instinctively get the feelings of which colors will go well together. I was inspired by my pretty spring garden of course – if I had to paint in January, I would just have to imagine a lot of colors, because the world would be too gray!
Covid is also part of the reason for why Yaneva chose to self-publish the book. – There were special grants and funds to apply to because of Covid, and I received enough support to cover the printing costs of the book. I had already been in touch with some publishers, but I have never really enjoyed the game of having to push and sell my work, so it was a good solution for me, Yaneva says.
Yaneva tells that На път was planned to be a silent book all along. – I had already experimented with some silent narratives. When graduating from Luca, the project for my Master’s degree was a graphic novel. I wanted to make that one silent, but it didn’t work, some pages needed a lot of text. So when I started this book, I wante to try one that was completely silent, thinking that if I planned it
in advance I could make it work.
- Silent books are a shared space where adults and children get to know each other
-Silent books are a shared space where adults and children can get to know each other. It is a possiblilty to explore different worlds in a very free manner, not limited by the words or by what the author is telling them – the visual offers more space for individual stories. As an artist, I really enjoy using only my craft, the art of illustration, to tell a story.
What is most important for me as an illustrator is the storytelling. Sometimes you see these amazing, artistic book where each page is like a work of art of its own, but for me the communication with the reader, telling the story is essential: The interaction between the pictures and the panels, and what happens between the panels. I amalways excited to see if the readers find meaning, and what menings the find. I love when they find the meaning I put in, but I love even more when they find meanings I did not even think about!
As many writers of silent books, Yaneva has had mixed experiences with the publishing industry: -After finishing the book, I went to the Bologna book fair and met with a lot of publishers. Many were very straigthforward and told me that even though they found the book beautiful, they could not publish it due to it being silent: “Next time, write something with words!”. Other publishers expressed great interest, only to ghost her later. Self-publishing turned out to be very successful, Yaneva only has three unsold copies left of the book. – A big part of the sales happened when I had an event at a local bookstore, and the majority of the rest are sold through the internet.
Bulgaria's capitol Sofia is brimming with bookstores, there seems to be at least one on every corner and two on every street! This picture is from the beautiful store Greenwich Junior, mentioned in our Bookstore guide.
Many tourists in Sofia will be surprised by the sheer number of bookstores in the city, there seems to be at least one on every corner and two one very street! Many of the stores have a great selection of children’s books, both Bulgarian and translated titles. But with the Bulgarian titles, the majority of the books seems to be either didactic non-fiction books or illustrated collections of traditional fairytales - there are not that many picturebooks to choose from, although the quality of the exciting ones is high.
Yaneva confirms this impression: - In the 90's the number of quality picture books illustrated by Bulgarian illustrators decreased compared to the communist era, but in the past 20 years there has been a growing interest. A lot of small, independent publishing houses are starting to pop up and more publishers are commissioning local artists, instead of just buying the illustration rights together with the texts' copyright.
But still, most commisions Yaneva recieves are for illustrated books, not too many picturebooks. -That is why I do my own books, because I really love to work creatively in pictures.
Do you want a closer look at Yaneva’s beautiful silent book? Read our review of На път here!
Bulgarian silent books
There are not many silent book published in Bulgaria. Балконът (review here) by Kalina Muhova was the first one to be published in this century (2018), and Mila Yanevas book is the second.
There are some vintage books to be found, like the two pictured above, found browsing the antiquarians of Sofia. The one with the animals on the cover, has an instruction for children to "tell their own story using the pictures". Many of the antiquarians also have a very interesting selection of vintage pop-up books, novelty books and gorgeously illustrated fairy tale collections, so they are well worth a visit!
Looking for vintage books in Sofia? We recommend a visit to the antiquarian Alba-books. From the outside, it does not look like much, but the owner speaks excellent English and is very service-minded, and they have a great selection of children's literature.