Mimi Cracra d’Agnès Rosenstiehl

Abstract

For the magazine Pomme d’Api, Agnès Rosenstiehl invents a little girl character, full of vivacity, transforming everyday life into a celebration, both through her language and her games. More impertinent than Petit Ours Brun, Mimi Cracra is one of the rebellious girls, although her young age does not allow her to join in. While her author takes time to stabilise her facial features, the heroine has endured through time thanks to her multiple adaptations in picturebooks, cartoons and novels, which play between faithful repetition, rewriting and adaptations to a specific publishing medium, but also thanks to the constantly renewed adjustments to the layout in the press title during nearly forty years. Mimi Cracra is above all emblematic of an evolution in the representation of the little child, in particular in her way of speaking, in phylactery and onomatopoeia. Her speech shows an apprehension of the world through all her senses. Her freshness and accuracy of tone make her a founding heroine, both in her time and timeless.

Keywords

• youth press
• illustration
• adaptation
• girl
• rewriting
• republishing