Analysis: Involuntary Autobiography Memory in "Totally Bored Boris!" Picture Book by Hans Wilhelm

I think this is very good book to children who are scared to interact with others. Totally Bored Boris! is one of Hans Wilhelm books that inspired by his childhood story which published in 1986, when he was 41. Hans Wilhelm put his bad experience when he was a child to a story and turned them into meaningful stories. The stort itself told about Boris, a young bear who is very bored at home. He wanted to play someone but everyone in the house seemed so busy. Then, Boris went to his tree house, looking for people to play with. When he was sitting in his tree house, he saw his sister come by with friends making a castle. His sister tried to attract Boris's attention by doing something silly and stupid party. However, although he was curious, he acted as if he weren't even interested. Then, Boris couldn't help his feelings to stop his sister and her friends and blew his trumpet as loud as he could. Instead of scolding him, his sister asked Boris to come play with him and his friends. In the end, Boris wasn't bored anymore.

As I mentioned, this book was inspired by his childhood story. Precisely when he was still living in Bremen, Germany. At that time, he was very bored because his mother didn't want to have a TV and always rainy out there. Besides that, his father was in the war and wasn't too close to his mother. However, he was lucky because he had a fairy godmother, aunt Hedwig, who always provided paper for him to draw, even though at that time paper was an luxury item.

Hans Wilhelm have a secret to get his inspiration. He would exile himself to Jamaica where there is no TV, radio or internet. Then, imagine when he was little and felt very bored. He recalled his past memories of making books, it called Involuntary autobiographical memories which means memories of personal experiences that come to mind spontaneously—that is, with no preceding attempt at retrieval.

So we can conclude that Hans Wilhelm makes books with retrieval involuntary autobiographical memory.  He uses his boredom to get inspiration.


References:

https://www.hanswilhelm.com/autobiography

https://scholar.google.co.id/scholar?q=involuntary+autobiographical+memory&hl=id&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3D1dICy2LUZTkJj

https://epdf.pub/totally-bored-boris-a-merritales-book.html