The Lives of Troubadours
Sanja Lovrenčić’s book presents biographical texts by anonymous authors from the 13th and 14th century that depicted the lives of troubadours. Medival biographical texts about troubadours are a very old testimony about the interest that lives of artist awakened in their contemporaries. In a time where the only biographies written were those of saints and important rulers, poets are the only group of people that defy that rule – by being written about. Their biographies were written in a language that in medieval times, among others, was called “lenga d’oc”. Today this language is mostly referred to as Occitan, and it is considered to have been Europe’s first literary language after the classical period.
Silences
In this book that addresses every generation words and images blend into an impressive poetical unity. Using drawings with simple, clear lines and concise sentences, the author tells a story that’s possible to read and experience on different levels. She talks about the close connection of human beings with nature, about changes and the importance of that – sometimes concealed, but still permanent – relationship. The tree is also a symbol of the author’s inner being, a deep and vital center where her strength arises from, a strength of the utmost importance in encounters with the outside world and collisions with its walls.
A River Certainly does Love the Flood
In her first poems Sanja Lovrenčić distanced herself in an elitist manner from the descriptiveness of reality and its usual subjects, but now in the collection A River Certainly does Love the Flood she approaches them in a relaxed manner equipped with elements of fairy tales – dreaminess, flax-ness and cotton-ness. Suddenly, for her, everything is utterable, without the pronounced use of the notional labyrinth or the figurative debris prominent with some other writers (…) Sometimes she would reach for the images that are close to a child’s concept of the world. Naturally, it is only an excuse. We are dealing here with a skilful mimicry of childlike tameness and imagination by the complexity and even aggression of adulthood. For our times, the author is really a gentle poet (but not a coy nor a complaining one) who by no means wants to use parasitic additions to make beauty, but neither does she want to use those purely technical, artificial means with “witchcraft” intentions. She is interested in a “walk with pebbles”. In all probably this is what contributed to her being the laureate of the Kiklop Award for the best poetry collection in the year 2007. (Sead Begović)
Kiklop Award for the best poetry book, 2007.
Songs of Birth and Dying
Collection of unconventional poems about love, written by a renowned Croatian poet.
Hilda’s Return to the Henhouse
Hilda’s Return to the Henhouse, is a sequel to The Voyage of Aunt Hilda. On a very dark night the travelling chicken finally comes home, and has to answer all sorts of questions about her journey. But the henhause is not exactly the same as it was when she left: the spirit of adventure, however modest, entered the minds of her chicken friends…
Age:4-6
The Crocodiles (and Know-It-All Bird)
Pika Vonična, one of Little Bells’ most productive picture book authors, is working on a series of picture books about animals since 2012. The four stories assembled in Crocodiles proved as particularly appealing to young readers: the endearing Jaroslav who shies water because he cannot swim, Strahimir who makes paper birds and looses them when the wind blows, Florian who is, unlike other crocodiles, never green, but changes colours from blue to white and red, provoke interest and compassion in the young reader. But in these stories everything ends well, and illustrations offer a lot to look at, even when the story is over.
Age: 4-7