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O Chlapcovi, Ktorý Plával S Piraňami (2012)

by David Almond(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Slovart

review 1: I loved this book, and I hope it will find an audience with children and not just children's lit enthusiasts (who are bound to eat it up). Odd and quirky are adjectives that don't quite do it justice ... but there you go. I really enjoyed the narrator's voice, and the way the reader is invited to think about the way stories are created, and even directly asked to shape the ending (or lack of one). At times the references to the world of imagination do seem just the teensiest bit precious, but that might be just me. There's a lot going on here ... it's an extraordinarily literary text. Lots of wordplay, allusions, metaphors, and so on; and yet it is light and playful in tone. It's the kind of book that is challenging yet accessible (although it is hard to imagine any 1... more0-year-old getting the allusions to Dostoyevsky, but that's OK; I'm fine with throwing some things in there for the grown-ups). It's also very British not only in terms of setting, which is one thing, but also in terms of language, which is quite another, and I wonder if American children will be put off by this--not a criticism, just a personal concern, since I'm a school librarian in Pennsylvania.
review 2: This story is lots of things - quirky, funny, weird in places and crazy in others. There are sad and happy parts and an ending left up to the reader. All in all, I think this story can be interpreted in lots of ways, but I believe it's about believing in yourself and what you think is important, being brave and essentially surviving the sometimes rocky side of growing up. I loved the format of this story font etc - and especially the wonderful talent of Oliver Jeffares' illustrations.The telling of this story is different in the fact that the reader is spoken to directly but the narrator and instead of using the usual ‘meanwhile’, the narrator takes the reader up and away from one character, across the sky and back down to another part of the story. Awesome. less

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