Stories for the End of the World (and Other Everyday Trifles)
17,00 € × 1 
Tintin and his Friends
17,00 € × 1 Ukupno : 34,00 €
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)
Shortlisted for the Predrag Matvejević Award 2021, longlisted for the Fric Award 2019 Sanja Lovrenčić’s books draw into her net a reader who is ready for adventure, for whom reading is not merely following a linear plot and a pastime, but recognition and acceptance of a game that, when joined, becomes infinitely meaningful, subtle and even fun. Her new novel, entitled Cabinet for Sentimental Trivial Literature, in which is its set, but which is also an indicative determinant of what will be told, is certainly one of the “more readable” of her novels, i.e. one in which there are no traps for readers, unless they themselves want to fall into them. Also, as is often the case with this author, its structure is built somewhat conceptually, by changing the epistolary form, which makes up the main flow of narration, with inserted stories that form a rounded and meaningful whole it. There has been a crisis in the Cabinet, which is a kind of small, private and non-profit museum that houses the legacy of “sentimental and trivial literature”. The curator, who writes letters to the late founder Rosa, realizes that not only does the Cabinet need a “cash injection”, but also a new guardian to replace him. Since this is not just an ordinary job but also has a specific emotional and, of course, sentimental value, neither is easy to perform, and a job advertisement that includes one of the key sentences of the novel: “Your story is more important to us than your qualifications”, will further complicate matters. (…) Ten candidates apply to the ad that had inadvertently implied that candidates should also be writers, and they bring with them stories about their professional and private lives, sometimes completely bizarre, but also stories that make up an integral part of the novel. While the curator, who is becoming more and more desperate and sceptical, fills letters to Rosa with fragments from his own and the Cabinet’s everyday life, as well as those concerning the past, origin and meaning of her and his museum, an unusual and “soft” legacy that seems to have been run-over by a time of different imperatives and priorities, the candidates succeed one another before him, with their experiences, but above all with the stories they enclose, enabling the novel to emerge from the closed space of the Cabinet into the outside, towards modernity and its peculiarities and problems. This “opening” – placed in stories within the story – subtly positions the novel towards recent reality, because it indirectly deals with the themes of art and artistic activism, social responsibility, commercialization and the entry of capital into unprofitable spheres of human activity, feminism. science and technology, but also love, which is one of the shared motives and concerns both interpersonal relationships and the preservation of some past values. (Jagna Pogačnik)
The little girl Piccola shows an unusual feeling for sounds. Imitating the chirping of birds, the crackling of fire, the sounds of the wind and everything else that surrounds her, Piccola amazes the listeners singing her little melodies. When she comes to a
music school and old Professore starts teaching her to play the piccolo, the smallest girl with the smallest flute becomes ‘Piccola con piccolo’; her Bird Music becomes a huge success and she is invited to perform all over the world. Piccola con piccolo
is the first picture book written by Bruno Mezić. Creating a likable character of the little girl Piccola,
telling about her adventures in sound, and skillfully playing with Italian words, the author introduces young readers to the terminology of classical music. Illustrations by the young visual artist and designer Klasja Habjan imaginatively and playfully follow the text and bring to life the original little heroine and her music.
Book #3705
Illustrating a fable about a parrot run away from the ZOO who meets various animals and finds all of them for some reason ridiculous until a fox teaches it a lesson, the artist Ivana Pipal finds ingenious ways of representing basically the same situation: the parrot and another animal. Giving each protagonist mood and personality, and creating at the same time deeply pleasant green world of the woods, she turns the tale about understanding and accepting others into rich visual pleasure.
Book #3396
In “Travertine Bridge”, the author Jana Prević Finderle, based on her own experience and memories, introduces us to the life of travelers and the world of travel. The short travel sketches act like original postcards addressed to the reader; a concise description derived from the author’s impression of a place, fellow traveler, or guest turns into a vivid picture before our eyes. From a modest summer vacation on the Adriatic Sea in early childhood, to somewhat later family car trips to Paris and London, to independent wanderings around the world in adulthood, the author’s text, sometimes humorous, sometimes melancholic, and almost always nostalgic, seems somehow familiar to us and encourages us to embark on an adventure ourselves. The text is accompanied by drawings by Mate Rupić, who skillfully and thoughtfully transferred some of the vivid moments of Jana’s stories to paper using the ink technique.
In his first prose text the young author uses patterns of traditional storytelling to speak about the contemporary problem of climate change. January disappeared, frightened by the absence of winter; a girl and a household spirit set off on a journey through the world of calendar, trying to find him and persuade him to come back. Adroitly following the spirit of the text, the illustrator uses elements from traditional book illustration, blending them with modern technique and expression.
Book #3348
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.
Book #3419
Beatrice Masini and Gianni De Conno, the award-winning Italian tandem, communicate in this picture book the artistic and emotional experience of travelling. The combination of magnificent oneiric images and the poetic prose takes us on a journey into the unknown: sometimes the destination is known, and sometimes the trip is just aimless wandering; sometimes we encounter obstacles and surprises, sometimes “treasures we don’t know yet of.” Every journey is a unique experience; and the insights we gain, the feelings we go through, and the memories we create are its precious consequences. Attractive illustrations and suggestive short sentences stimulate imagination and their dreamy quality has won numerous readers; in 2018 Beatrice Masini and Gianni De Conno received the most prestigious prize in the field of children’s literature “SuperPremio Andersen”. For the great Gianni De Conno, this picture book marked the end of a life’s journey; it is the last and farewell gift he left us before his untimely death.
Book #3340
“We, the Mice”, a new picture book by Pika Vončina, is a sequel to her series of picture books about a fantastic animal world. Four stories about a harmonious family of mice are told by Erik the Unstoppable, the mouse who got his nickname because he constantly asks curious questions. His family does not live in “holes” but in nice and comfy dwellings, eating a variety of fruits and vegetables (sometimes even cheese!), loving music and gardens…
The text is handwritten in large block letters, which allows younger children to read it on their own, and helps them as an additional motivation in the process of learning to read and write. The diversity of characters and settings stimulates the development of children’s imagination and deepens their perception and emotional intelligence.
Ages 4-7
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.
Book #3338
In this extraordinary picture-book the story keeps returning to its beginning. At every page, Igor Rajki starts out with the classical formula “Once there was a…”, only to interrupt the narration and turn to something else. The little sketches created in this way as well as the reasons the author offers for never finishing any of his stories finally build up to a hilarious mosaic of anecdotes while constructing a somewhat nervous but highly entertaining narrative voice. The visual artist Krešimir Zimonić responded to the fragmentary narrative style by using techniques of collage which combine drawings, photographs, graffiti styled writings and “ready-made” visual material. Once is, for this reason, a thoroughly sketchy and incredibly rich little book.
Paintings, a collection of prose poems, brings Segalen’s descriptions of imaginary Chinese visual art: thereby a dialogue is opened not only between different cultures, but also between different artistic media. The reader wanders around these foreign, strange places, sometimes lost, sometimes amazed but is always lead forwards by Segalen’s virtuoso writing.
Mala zvona brings the first integral Croatian translation of this poetic masterpiece.
How would a dog perceive the Victorian era? What would be this dog’s attitude towards his mistress – the great poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning? What happens when a biographical content is treated from a purely fictional perspective? These are the questions posed, and answered, in the short novel Flush; a Biography. In this playful, seemingly frivolous but very lucid, stylistically flawless text, Virginia Woolf is dealing with the issues of history, society conventions and social justice, while exploring in the extreme the possibilities of rendering of the perceptual perspective of an animal.
In Cats, the author offers several connected tales: a brave cat Mortimer goes to the sea to see the great white shark (meeting on his way the dangerous mister Darkly); a company of wandering acrobat-cats falls apart because of a very strange problem; Zigfrid and Zelda, brother and sister, practice the skills of measuring and sewing in their own way; and cat chefs, Leonard and Edgar are making pancakes for all of them.
Age: 4-6
