Showing all 7 results
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Tales of the Seasons
Godina izdanja: 2007.
Like the bits of kaleidoscope glass illuminated by a ray of the sun, Tales of the Seasons tells the story of countless little events in one year in the childhood of four friends who keep finding themselves in situations that are always new and mostly unusual. At the same time, it is a story about the passage of time told from a child's point of view, a story about nature that is always there, whether we are aware of it or not, and finally, certainly also a story about everything that makes the family a community of people who are close to one another – about ups and downs, about the tenderness and tensions of family life, and about why we need one another. Aware that friendship and family and nature are often taken for granted as something that is simply there, although they shape children's lives much more deeply than it seems at first glance, the author shifts the viewpoint from one character to another, building a text that allows you to see the different perspectives of different people. … (Anita Peti Stantić)
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Sunshine
Godina izdanja: 2005.
Sanja Lovrenčić is an author with a very special kind of imagination, who has for years been enriching children’s worlds with exceptionally fine texts, both in content and in language. This book is a collection of nine new texts in which she humorously modifies domestic, but also European tradition. She places before us her worlds that mirror our everyday lives, rearranges the dense fabric of texts to show different ways of reading fairy tales, and makes possible their reception in almost the entire primary-school population (from children who will be read to by others, to those who will independently analyse the tales as images of their own spiritual horizon). The quality of this text, expressed in the elegance of style and the layered content, is enriched with amusing illustrations by one of Croatian best illustrators, Svjetlan Junaković. (Anita Peti Stantic, ed)
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The Year Without a Rabbit
Godina izdanja: 2004.
Leo is sitting in front of the house, lounging in a chair and thinking about the past year. The summer was great and promised a good start to seventh grade: with his brother and some friends he had founded a rock band that played a crazy summer hit, played in an international orchestra in Slovenia, and also, he had bathed in the sea. But when he returned to the city, things started going downhill - their pet, a brown rabbit, disappeared without trace, seventh grade started "badly", with a pile of books, endless assignments and papers, and disagreement broke out with the new fencing coach ... Sanja Lovrenčić enriched Croatian youth prose with a realistic and entertaining novel which, through the eyes of the smart, witty and talkative boy Leo, his family and friends, makes us aware (or reminds us) of the problems of growing up. Through the clarity of a child’s mind, we are faced with the absurdities of the adult world, as well as absurdities in schooling (very well described in the chapter "When you write about spring for the seventh time"). Adolescence has never been easy, but this novel shows that it can and should be fun! (recommendation of the Vladimir Nazor Library in Zagreb)
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A Perfect Island
Godina izdanja: 2002.
(a small chronicle of a family holiday) A story about the holiday of a happy family, supplemented with stories about the island of Silba (about its past and present), realistic notes by ten-year-old Mimi, SF stories by fourteen-year-old Dario, nostalgic memories of Dad Zlatko and literary compositions by Mum Sylvia, bursting with details. The novel is basically an unusual “conquest” of the island, leaving behind notes that remain after the summer, like photographs do. It is told in a simple style which even adults can enjoy, especially lovers of travel prose. (Ranka Javor, ed)
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Four Terrible Foof-Eaters and one Little Fooffy
Godina izdanja: 2001.
Grigor Vitez Award 2001 This book is like a magic box which, when we open it, takes us into a world of imagination. The stories are original and funny, but also represent a fine piece of literature for readers aged seven to ten. They have an added therapeutic value, serving as a sort of cure for children’s bedtime fears.
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The House above a Monster
Godina izdanja: 1996.
In The House above a Monster, imagination intertwines with reality in bedtime stories an aunt tells her two nephews. The boys are worried because they are soon to move from their present home to the old family house, and their aunt comforts them by telling a story about a funny monster who sleeps under that house, a monster-expert grandfather, and children who will help him solve the problem of broken plates. And this is just the beginning of a storytelling adventure. An animated film was made featuring the title story from this book, which you can see here.
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Esperel – the Town of Little Wonders
Godina izdanja: 1994., 2005., 2010.
Esperel is a small town built around a ruined Castle on a hill, between a meadow and the Dark Forest, which is today no longer dark or dangerous. The town has a river which the inhabitants especially love, and its centre is the only town square and it can be reached along many narrow winding streets. Those who accompany the narrator in wandering through this square, streets and tranquil town surroundings, will find out, among other things, why the Esperel River suddenly turned yellow one day, how postman Max became temporarily invisible, what happened to three brothers, the bakers Peregrin, Petruška and Pipo. They will also find out how dwarves stole green bottles from the glassmaker's workshop, why the hat shop started selling only hats for cats, who watches over the welfare of the city in the Esperel underground, and how one summer the ruined Castle became a palace of music. … Perhaps they will also like the way in which Ana, the flower seller, freed the silent Bertran of his fear of the moon. There are no dramatic events in the world of Esperel, there is nothing extreme that we sometimes discover with astonishment in some of the most famous fairy tales for children. That is because, as the title promises, it is a world of small wonders, in which the imagination can turn into reality at any moment, not to challenge it, to prove it insufficient and grey, but to make it more beautiful, interesting, worth of the effort that is needed to live in it. There are no explicit moral lessons in these stories, but a certain kind of instructiveness can be felt in the way in which life in Esperel is presented, which may be an inevitable and necessary aspect of literature for children. It shows that everyone needs someone so that the city and its inhabitants can represent an organic whole, almost an extended family, and also that the wondrous is not something that should be excluded from life, because it too contributes to the fact that, as one story says, "the city stays alive, people like to live in it, the houses have healthy roots, the treelines don't dry out". Perhaps this kind of experience is especially valuable in these times, so we would love to see the book in the hands of young readers. And because of the imagination and some fine humour, which occasionally flickers from the pages, it could be enjoyed by readers who are supposedly already adults. (Hrvoje Pejaković)
