dominik vukovic Archives

Rascals in the Gutter

17,00 €

In the best tradition of young adult novels, but with a fresh voice, Josip Čekolj recounts the story of his rascals — four friends on the brink of adulthood. Although the town through which they roam is imaginary, their love and confusion, their conflicts and blunders, much like their need for warmth and belonging are all very real. As the rascals learn to find their way ‘in the gutter’, various characters show up to guide them along. Some are more trustworthy than others, and they largely come from the fringes of society, with perhaps the most important being an old lady with her cats and flair for poetry. And as usually happens in coming-of-age stories, their wading through murky waters becomes a first step towards maturity. The inspiration for this book was the exhibition ‘Rascals and Frogs’ by the visual artist Dominik Vuković, themed around memories of childhood. He illustrated this edition in close collaboration with the author, resulting in a special relationship between the text and illustrations.

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Letters for Everyone

15,00 €

Sanja Lovrenčić

This playful and cheerful book is perfect for those learning to read as well as for those who are helping them in this endeavor. Every of thirty very short stories – in which numerous characters, both human and animal, appear – is dominated by one single letter. This letter can be searched for, with ears or eyes, and every story can be continued. This unique spelling book invites the reader to play whereby it turns gaining reading habits into an easy and fun project.

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Marija in Cities

15,66 €

Sanja Lovrenčić

Marija in Cities belongs to the series of Sanja Lovrenčić’s picture books about Croatian visual artists; this one is about the well-known photographer Marija Braut. The story about her is told from the viewpoint of her inseparable companion, the analogue camera, which directly and simply reports on their shared travels and work, the motifs of Marija’s photography, and her feeling for people and spaces, which the camera sometimes shared with the artist, and at other times just longed for calm scenes that are easier to capture. This is a lyrically intoned, very subtle depiction of the artist’s life and work, filled with a vestige of nostalgia for the great age of analogue photography, but also with hope in its preservation. In addition, the author offers the young readers an easy-to-understand introduction to the basics of this art technique.(Adrian Pelc, ed)

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The Fly in the Atelier of Ivan Kožarić

15,00 €

Sanja Lovrenčić

How to introduce children to the world of a famous conceptual artist? The author of the text chose a character from the artist’s notebook, a little fly. Accidentally it enters the atelier – where all objects are wrapped in paper (the situation taken from real life). One by one they unwrap themselves for the little fly, telling and singing their stories. The illustrator creates the magical space of the atelier with highly original inventiveness, masterfully inserting citations of Kožarić’s works.

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Six Walks of Slava Raškaj

15,00 €

Sanja Lovrenčić

This picture-book is the first within a series with which Mala zvona introduces works of great Croatian visual artists to children. The famous Croatian impressionist painter S. Raškaj was deaf – and very sensitive to nature. Therefore, the writer of this picture book chose to represent her life and work in six walks with easel in different surroundings: the garden of her childhood, parks in the city where she learned to paint, winter woods and summer meadows where she made her best pictures. The illustrator did not copy the style of watercolors made by S. Raškaj, but gave the adequate transparence and lightness to his own.

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The End of a Long Journey

13,27 €

Michael Ende

In this short novel Michael Ende takes us for a journey across Europe, Asia, Africa, all the way to Hindukush. The story’s protagonist, Cyril Abercomby is an English aristocrat and the son of a 19th century diplomat. In his childhood he follows his father on diplomatic missions and when the father dies, Cyril inherits the family fortune and continues wandering across the globe in a pointless spleen. Although he had been enjoying the luxury of grand hotels and high society ever since his earliest childhood, Cyril is haunted for life by a feeling of non-belonging, of homelessness. But then one day, he finds his home – on a painting. Suddenly his voyages become purposeful: he must find the place depicted on the canvas, no matter the costs. This quest leads him to different atrocities and a final, suicidal, mission: neither dead, nor alive, Cyril finds his home in the space of his own imagination grafted upon a real geographical place. Michael Ende thus develops a dark, but lyrical story on alienation, the power of imagination and the workings of art. His text has been illustrated by the painter Dominik Vuković who visually represented the dark contours of this story that revolves around a painting.

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