On April 22, one year after its announcement and with lots of love and hard work from a few volunteers, the “Moja prva knjiga” – “My first |
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| book” contest came to the close of its first round at the prize giving ceremony at the city theatre in Karlovac. |
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About 10 schools came from different places in Croatia, such as Zadar, Rijeka, Zagreb, Varazdin, Cakovec, Koprivnica, Stubicke Toplice and others. Most of the schools arrived exactly on time at 3pm and joined local school groups on a tour of Karlovac old city. Karlovac has a fixed ‘birthday’ when it was strategically built as a defence post again invasions from the South. It has a six |
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| pointed star with a deep moat around its walls at the intersection of four rivers. At the centre on a smaller six pointed star all the schools assembled and introduced each other. After that they had some free time to stroll around and see the exhibition of the books by children. We had a beautiful artistic display of the 150 best books and of course a table with the newly five published books for sale. |
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In the early evening, the theatre was full to the brim with about 400 people and children. The programme started with the Zorin Dom children’s ballet performing “Ples igracaka” (The Dance of Toys) – the winning story of the 14 year old Masa Lenuzzi from Karlovac. It was a lovely fresh simple and wonderful story line, well choreographed with lots of little elves and toys dancing among the main ballet characters. The stage was an explosion of children’s joy to dance and perform and the same for the audience to watch it! |
| Lukrecia and Armin, two young members of our Kuku (klub za kreavno ucenje- creative learning club) of CNS presented a PowerPoint of some images from the 335 books that came from 40 different places in Croatia. It was wonderful to see how children wrote and illustrated. The slides started with themes of Children’s Rights where children expressed their thoughts and feelings. One book was titled “My father has improved” and had an image of him drinking. Next were images of children’s sensitivity and care for animals and nature. And lots of fantasy and adventure stories! Some authors got special mention, such as the youngest who was only 6 1/2, one who lost her book and wrote it again and two who submitted two books!Children’s choir “Cicibani” – were lots of kids bursting to sing, ages kindergarten and above – they brought the most laughter to the audience with their childlike presence. The whole theatre was alive! |
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| Sanya Pilic, a very popular children’s writer came to give the prizes with Tito Bilopavlovic, also a children’s litterateur and editor of a children’s magazine. Romana Leko as president of CNS introduced CNS. Sanda spoke about the contest and announced the second contest (2005/6). A local company director publicly agreed to give support on the stage! Finally Helena gave thanks to the city, county and all who helped. One parent expressed her support and desire to start a CNS branch in Zagreb.Some concrete outcome – a budding idea and steps towards setting up a children’s centre in |
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| Zagreb… and lots more enthusiasm and plans for the future.Here is the text of the book of the youngest winner a boy of 9 years. It is a translation into English. He made beautiful tempera paintings for each line. |
The sea is like a big blue child. |
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