While cleaning and sorting piles of books I came across this delightful children's picture book by one of Latvia's most respected writers. Čingo Baba is the biggest crybaby, so he is asked to come to the King of the Sea to heal the King's son, who needs human tears to heal. A large snail is sent to get Čingo, as he has a house on his back that can carry the kid into the deep sea. They meet various characters like Doctor Jellyfish, Commander Shark, Agent Crab, Sea Weed and more. Of course Čingo stops crying once the adventure begins. The illustrations are delightful and the moral of the story is not to cry over every little thing.
Belševica has chosen to write this as a play in rhyme (she is known for her poetry). As soon as I saw that it was a play, my first thought was, could we ever use this in Latvian school? Alas, the language is too complicated and it would take a lot of imagination to come up with a way of portraying the underwater world.
No comments:
Post a Comment