Songs of Birth and Dying
10,00 €Collection of unconventional poems about love, written by a renowned Croatian poet.
Hilda’s Return to the Henhouse
10,00 €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)
10,00 €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
Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him
10,00 €In these biographic fragments Jessie Conrad sketches the picture of her husband Joseph, one of the greatest writers of English twentieth century literature: nervous, a bit weird, attached to his family in his own way, but first of all, obsessed with his work. At the same time, the reader catches a glimpse of Jessie herself, the almost ideal writer’s wife of old times: typing his texts, cooking, economizing, welcoming guests, raising the children, coping with reality in every possible way instead of Joseph. But the act of writing puts her beyond the role of mother, wife and housewife: taking the courage to write down this intimate testimony, she creates a place for herself in Conrad’s verbal space and becomes a writer in her own right.
Three Tales from The Tale of Tales
10,00 €Mala zvona is proud to present the first Croatian translation of a selection of stories from Giambattista Basile’s famousTale of Tales (Lo cunto de li cunti or Il Pentamerone)
Basile’s collection, written in the 17th century in Neapolitan dialect, served as an inspiration to numerous fairy tale writers over the centuries; Basile’s motifs can be traced through many famous collections, such as those written by Perrault or the brothers Grimm.
In these grotesque stories – which are by no means intended for children – Basile teaches the reader about virtue, vice, deception and love while using a flamboyant Baroque rhetoric. Our selection includes the following stories: The Enchanted Doe, The Flea and The Old Woman Who Was Skinned who were also used as a pretext for Matteo Garrone’s multiple award-winning movie Il racconto dei racconti.
Gvalup and Other Stories
10,00 €A girl riding a hare, a boy taking off to an adventure with a walking carob tree, a barge that riots against its crew, a little fawn adopted in an elfish family, a statue that decides to live near a pond, a star that falls from the sky before its time – Tamara Bakran’s stories are as varied as are her heroes. Little episodes from the everyday life of a child suddenly take a fantastic turn – a little girl crying that the water for her hair wash is too hot may summon a fire brigade, and a jump into a puddle may lead into a fairyland. The originality and merry rhythm of these stories catch the reader’s attention and offer the kind of pleasure that is the basic prerequisite for creation of a lasting interest in books and reading.
Age: 6-9
Zagreb Childhood in the Sixties
10,00 €Sanja Lovrenčić wrote the book of prose fragments entitled Zagreb Childhood in the Sixties while she was working on the translation of Walter Benjamin’s autobiographical Berlin Childhood around 1900,and her writing is therefore marked by an interesting duality. Zagreb Childhood functions as an autobiographical discourse and deals with the elements typical for that genre: introspection, sketches of the chosen period, a fine nostalgia for childhood, which an adult can reach only as a selection of fragments that can never be made into a coherent whole; those elements could be labelled as personal and local. On the other hand, however, the book is a response to a literary text, a reaction not to a childhood or a social change, but to a certain type of writing. This leads to a completely different set of ideas, that we might call inherently literary – intertextuality, the fictionalization of the self, the use of poetic language and lyrical fragments that simultaneously connote and transcend personal experience. Thus Zagreb Childhood combines two elements that are necessary to make a quality literature: inclusion in the local context, as well as its constant dissolution – both intimacy and universality.
Alma on the Rooftops
10,00 €On a day she chooses to be a chimney expert, Alma is exploring roofs and chimneys, finding unexpected items, meeting extraordinary characters and making surprising discoveries. Playful and original, the story draws the little reader into a world that is, at the same time, reassuringly familiar and genuinely adventurous.
Age: 4-6
Berlin Childhood around 1900
10,00 €Over the last few decades Walter Benjamin has become one of the most prominent names in the humanities: considering definitions of modernity, film theory, philosophy of history, cultural studies or criticism of canonical literary texts, his work can hardly be avoided. This is brought about by Benjamin’s broad interests and lucidity, but also by his awareness of the fact that cultural theory or philosophy always implies an act of writing. His penchant towards the use of metaphor, image, allusion rather than systematical argumentation and his insistence on a purified stile rather than a strict composition make Benjamin’s texts – that always place themselves between philosophy and literature – a field of knowledge that never allows an unambiguous interpretation. In his Berlin Childhood around 1900 the dominant element is precisely this ‘surplus’ of literature; applying an autobiographical discourse, Benjamin creates a lyrical picture of his childhood in a rich bourgeois family from Berlin. Nevertheless, this seemingly personal thematic becomes a historically relevant document that bears witness to the life and culture of the big city, evoking a great number of social and philosophical issues: the constitution of subject through memory, the shadow of class struggle, the possibility of objective historical representation, the relation between modernism and messianism. Starting from a specific literary genre, Berlin Childhood around 1900 amplifies the tension between philosophy and literature, the tension that makes them both possible: thus Benjamin anticipates some of the most important themes and techniques of post-structuralism, and stays as modern as ever.
Entrepreneurs
10,00 €The short novel Entrepreneurs by Mathias Nawrat, one of the most interesting voices of the new generation of German writers, can be situated into the dystopian tradition of the science-fiction genre with elements of social criticism. The story is happening in a well-known world, labeled by the geographical toponym Schwarzwald; however, this world underwent a certain kind of apocalypse – about which nothing is said explicitly, but we guess it had something to do with nuclear power – and the rules of an advanced technocratic society do not function any more, although they are not totally suspended. Through this fragmentary world, where nature, technology and waste interlace and form grotesque figures, roams the protagonist and narrator Lipa, a thirteen-year old girl. With her father and brother she collects different kinds of toxic leftovers while calling this activity entrepreneurship. The life of her family, in unstable balance on the edge of poverty and danger, is approaching the inevitable catastrophe.
Real Children (do not) Grow Up in Passing
10,00 €A collection of poems by Danish-American author Cindy Lynn Brown, translated into Croatian by Mišo Grundler. Contemporary issues, original concept and innovative poetic language of the book were welcomed by the Danish literary critics.
The Fox Sings in A Lovely Way
10,00 €The first picture book written and illustrated by the young, but already renowned visual artist Ivan Tudek. His story about a harmonious world, disturbed by the intrusion of a howling bear, is told in a visual style inspired by comic books, in black and white (the picture book may also be used as coloring book).
Age: 4-6
How Wang-Fo Was Saved
10,00 €How Wang-Fo Was Saved is one of a very few texts for children written by the great French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, here translated into Croatian for the first time. In her story, inspired by a Chinese legend, with a master painter as the main protagonist, Yourcenar is posing fundamental questions about humanity and art in a simple, yet striking manner. Searching for the aesthetic pleasure the perfect master Wang-Fo discards the material world and its acclaim. However, an encounter with the Emperor reminds him that works of art are always about the world and part of the world – even if they eventually succeed in becoming a world in their own right and a sort of sanctuary.
Age 12+
The Pursuit of Winter
10,00 €The Pursuit of Winter is the first text that a renowned Croatian poet wrote for children. The plot is triggered by the (unspoken) question: “Could something lovely become boring?” It obviously can, if it is only and always lovely, especially if the thing we are talking about is the weather. The picture book takes the reader – along with the animal protagonists, squirrel, wolf, deer, ants and birds – on a journey toward something absent but desired. And the miracle resides in the possibility to join forces and bring about the (unlikely) change.
The illustrations by Mingsheng-Pi make a perfect counterpoint to Kirin’s laconic and lyrical text. The illustrator received a Special Mention of the “Grigor Vitez” Award.
Age: 4-6
Alma dimnjačarka
10,00 €Na dan kada je odlučila postati dimnjačarka, Alma počinje istraživati krovove i dimnjake kuća. Pri tome će naići na neočekivane stvari, upoznati neobične likove i doći do iznenađujućih otkrića. Ova zaigrana i originalna priča povesti će mlade čitatelje u simpatičnu i uzbudljivu avanturu.