Polish / Poland
Wścibscy
(The curious ones)
Gellner, Dorota
(text)
Zdęba, Beata
(illus.)
Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Bajka, 2012. – 35 p. + [2] p.
ISBN 978-83-61824-43-5
Curiosity | Picture book | Mistrust | Eavesdropping
Reading age: 5+
White Ravens issue: 2013
“Eavesdroppers will never hear any good of themselves.” Dorota Gellner’s book of rhymed vignettes is guided by this old saying. The book reveals in seventeen scenes how far pathological curiosity and nosiness can be taken. It is exceedingly amusing for the reader to witness the excessive gawking and eavesdropping of all the members of the Curiosity family, as these are portrayed in peppery verse. After auntie, grandpa, grandson and even dog and cat have all spied by magnifying glass or by telescope, peered through windows on stilts and pestered the neighbours, they arrive in the doctor’s office as curious specimens indeed, with enormous ears and eyes. The poems and occasionally austere illustrations both address a typically human weakness in a manner more tongue-in-cheek and mocking than moralising.