Slovenian / Slovenia
Za devetimi drevesi
(In a faraway forest)
Arnuš Pupis, Tina
(text)
Komadina, Tanja
(illus.)
Dob pri Domžalah: Miš, 2017. – 93 p.
(Series: Zbirka Miškolinke)
ISBN 978-961-272-230-2
Forest | Animals | Community | Helpfulness
Reading age: 8+
White Ravens issue: 2018
A debut book to cuddle up to – Tina Arnuš Pupis (b. 1982) has created a kind of literary stuffed toy. She here offers ten stories about an eminently likeable forest community made up of a fox and a hedghog, a bear and a rabbit, a mouse and an owl as well as a human child named “Lucky One”. Readers will want to press the book to themselves, an impulse further fed by Tanja Komadina’s (b. 1976) cute tongue-in-cheek illustrations. That said, the animals in the forest aren’t idle: the one doesn’t like the other, and little advantages are often secured for oneself and not for others. But on the whole, in the case of big, important matters, everyone aims to help each other out or to have some fun together and joke around. The wonderful mix of fun, adventure, and child-like playfulness in both text and image make these beastly stories utterly worth reading, especially out loud.