Christoph Droesser: It’s about Sausage-What you have to know if you like to eat meat

IT’S ABOUT SAUSAGE:
WHAT YOU HAVE TO KNOW IF YOU LIKE TO EAT MEAT
Es geht um die Wurst :
Was du wissen musst, wenn du gern Fleisch isst
Christoph Droesser (NASW member) and Nora Coenenberg (illustrator)
Gabriel Verlag, Germany, Jan. 11, 2021, $16 (14 EUR)
ISBN-10: 3522305817; ISBN-13 : 978-3522305815
Ages 8+

Droesser reports:

My illustrator friend Nora Coenenberg approached me in 2019, saying: “I’d like to do a kids’ book about meat.” I loved the idea. Parents who serve their kid burgers or hot dogs have to face the day when the child finds out that an animal was killed in the process. A lot of questions follow: how did the animal live? How did it die? Is eating meat healthy? What about the environment? Nora and I both eat meat, so we wanted to find out if it is possible to consume meat with a clear conscience.

The two of us had done a kids’ book together in 2019 (100 Kinder, a non-fiction book about the world’s children, reduced to a representative sample of 100). Our publisher, Gabriel Verlag, was open to our suggestion. I submitted a one-page proposal and my agent got the paperwork ready.

Nutrition and agriculture aren’t my beat, so I had to dive into statistics about meat consumption, European regulations for cattle production, and the “food pyramid.” The book has four chapters: human nutrition, animal welfare, meat’s environmental impact, and eating better. We have double-page illustrations about how a slaughterhouse works and how hot dogs are made. We are happy with the result and will look a lot closer at meat labels in the future, trying to eat appropriately sourced meat.

The book at first will be available only on the German market. I’d love to do a version for the American market, although I’d have to start a lot of the research from scratch due to different regulations. I’ve tried to do that with two other German books of mine, but even though I had an agent, I never could land a deal. Turns out the book market in the US is pretty tight, even for an established author from another country.

I was a long time editor for the German weekly Die Zeit before I moved to San Francisco six years ago to freelance as a science writer. I joined NASW two years ago since I thought you should team up with colleagues where you live, not where your stories appear.

Contact info:

• Christoph Droesser, 415-425-9472, christoph@droesser.net, https://www.droesser.net/en/
• Book: https://www.thienemann-esslinger.de/gabriel/buecher/buchdetailseite/es-geht-um-die-wurst-was-du-wissen-musst-wenn-du-gern-fleisch-isst-isbn-978-3-522-30581-5/
• Agent: Heike Wilhelmi, mail@agenturwilhelmi.de
• Publicist: Svea Unbehaun. +49 711 210 55-29, unbehaun@thienemann-esslinger.de

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