Slovak / Slovakia
Johanka v Zapadáciku
(Johanka in Zapadáčiku)
Revajová, Toňa
(text)
Balogh, Ďuro
(illus.)
Bratislava: Slovart, 2012. – 130 p.
ISBN 978-80-556-0310-0
Moving house | Otherness | Outsider
Reading age: 9+
White Ravens issue: 2013
Johanka is ten and has just moved to the country with her little brother Samko and her mother. Not much going on there it seems. Her much-loved grandmother is absent, she has no real friends, no real bathroom, only a cherry tree in the garden. Still, the bubbly girl, a Slovakian mix of Pippi Longstocking and Clarice Bean – two children’s book heroines that Johanka admires – manages to stir up her new surroundings and especially her new school class and to find a way in her new life, thanks to her forthright manner. A self-contained, detail-sparse plot presents the ideal framework for Toňa Revajová’s lively tale of a modern childhood filled with humour, fun, but also a first awareness of problems like separation and otherness.