Croatia
197
Majnaric, Zeljko (text)
Radoicic, Vjekoslav Vojo (illus.)
Šuma (The forest)
Rijeka : Adamic, 2002. – 16 p.
ISBN 953-219-069-4
Animal – Habitat – Roadworks – Environmental pollution
This picture book, in which animals fight against the building of a road,
alludes to the construction of the motorway from Rijeka to Zagreb. In the end,
the forest animals are not able to prevent the road from being completed.
Thus, cars drive on it, cutting the forest into two parts, people throw
rubbish out of the car windows, and the pollution from factories and
refineries increases. Since the people finally show some sense and build a few
bridges for the animals across the road, the story has at least a realistic
ending, albeit not an entirely happy one. This volume, illustrated in bright
watercolour collages by a friend of the famous Austrian artist Friedensreich
Hundertwasser, is part of a series of ecological picture books with the
publisher Adamic. (5+)
198
Petrlik Huseinović, Andrea
Ciconia Ciconia : bijela roda (Ciconia Ciconia : the white stork)
Zagreb : Kašmir Promet, 2003. – [36] p.
(Biblioteka oblak)
ISBN 953-6613-60-3
Croatia – Stork – War – Home country
In the second picture book that she has both written and illustrated, Andrea
Petrlik-Huseinović tells the story of a stork who is forced to leave his home
during the war in Croatia and look for a new place to stay. After a true
odyssey, the bird ends up in an Internet café where he spots his home village
Cigoč on a screen and is thus able to find his way back. In the appendix, the
readers learn something about the first European ‘stork-village’ (more
storks than people!) and the sanctuary Lonjsko Polje, a marshland east of the
Croatian capital of Zagreb. The cheerful tempera illustrations of this picture
book, of which Kašmir Promet has also published a parallel English language
edition, show the world from a stork’s perspective in various shades of
blue. (4+)
199
Pilic, Sanja (text)
Sasvim sam popubertetio (I am completely pubertised)
Zagreb : Kašmir Promet, 2002. – 26 p.
(Biblioteka 20 14)
ISBN 953-6613-49-2
Divorce – Adolescence – Puberty – Generation gap – Love
With a great deal of sensitivity, the popular Croatian author Sanja Pilić
(born 1954) tells the story of 15-year-old Luka. After his father has moved
out, his mother and sister often feel they have to lecture the boy. At school,
he is up to his neck in a never-ending crisis, his marks are a catastrophe,
and so are his relationships with girls. The world starts to change in a
‘terrifying’ way, when Luka suddenly falls in love with exactly the one
girl who really annoyed him a lot and whom he used to tease all the time. Yet,
slowly, he comes to realise that there is no sense in doing what all the
others expect him to do and to pretend to be somebody he simply isn’t. (13+)