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  • Postcards

There are many narratives about war, but in 32 chapters, Abbas Jahangiryan tells the adventures of teenage boy, Hami, in the war-stricken city of Ghom, a religious city of Iran. The story begins with the love of two adolescents. The protagonist, Hami, is a refugee who has lost his parents during the bombardment of Iran-Iraq war in Dezful (Southern city of Iran). Now he lives with his grandma. The author narrates the bitterness of war alongside the story of a boy who is an artist in calligraphy and drawing. His well-meaning teacher, Afra, supports him. However, because of the war, his artistic talent does not flourish until he finds a job in the cemetery. Jahangiryan accounts war as the real catastrophe of human lives, and conveys the profound effect war has on young people in a simple, yet profound, language.

Bahra Eshraq

Abbas Jahangiryan
Wake Me up when the War is Over
Tehran: Ofogh Publishing House, 2010.
222 p.
ISBN: 9789643696573
(YA Novel) [End Page 10]

The text written by Luisa Mattia is strongly metaphorical and the title as well is used in a metaphorical sense. Per filo e per segno is an Italian idiomatic expression meaning “to tell in great detail,” but at the same time the title plays on the word “filo” [thread]. The whole story is indeed based on threads which become sheets of paper and, eventually, a book. Each and every one of these threads represents the stories collected by Silva, a child who loves to listen to stories. With the threads she first collects from a tailor, Silva creates a net to hold all the stories, so she could tell them again and again. Everyone who has something to tell knows that Silva would be ready to listen to them. And she collects so many stories that the threads are not enough anymore. That is when Silva asks for a white cloth and squid ink to write the stories down. Once again this is not enough, thus she decides to cut every story as a paper and sew the pages together to create a book. The text is beautifully enriched by Vittoria Facchini’s stylistically original illustrations which combine black and white drawings with colour photos.

Melissa Garavini

Luisa Mattia
Per filo e per segno
Illus. Vittoria Facchini
Roma, Italia: Donzelli editore, 2012
28 pp.
ISBN 9788860366962
(Picture Book, 5+) [End Page 21]

The author of Like You and Me, Shahnaz Qayumi, draws from personal experience and childhood memory in order to create a wonderful narrative to go along with beautiful illustrations that comment on the equality of all the world’s ethnicities. Young children will find this picture book captivating as well as informative, as it suggests the biases that stem from differences existing among cultures are unnecessary, because everyone, in essence, is just “Like You and Me.” The story goes through a number of ordinary, everyday activities, in which young children may notice dissimilarity between how different cultures go about the same practices. Children reading the narrative will feel as if it is addressed directly to them, which will allow them to become immersed in the story while unknowingly learning a valuable lesson in tolerance and acceptance. Shavon Cheng illustrates this narrative, and presents smiling, rosy-cheeked children, no matter what activity they are taking part in, or what they may be wearing. Ultimately children will recognize that although specific cultures may eat, play, or dress differently, everyone cries, dreams and laughs just the same.

Tia Lalani

Shahnaz Qayumi
Like You and Me
Illus. by Shavon Chen
Taipei: AuthorHouse, 2011.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-3-8397-1
(Picture Book, Ages 3–5) [End Page 60]

In Sora and the Cloud, noted children’s artist Felicia Hoshino extends the art of storytelling from the visual to the verbal, bringing to it the same sensitivity and subtlety that has garnered praise for her other popular storybooks. Through her illustrations, Hoshino transforms a seemingly simple story of a boy’s development from inquisitive baby to adventurous child who takes a journey on the top of a cloud. As Sora moves through the book, across and up the pages through borderless frames, from...

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