Original title: Kapka Ája
Genre: children´s book
Publisher:
Host, 2022
ISBN: 978-80-275-1089-4
Pages: 88
Foreign editions:
Slovenian (Celjska Mohorjeva Družba, 2023, Nives Vidrih)
What’s it like at a school for drops of water? What do they learn there? You’d be surprised!
You won’t find subjects like this on your timetable. Which is a pity, because who wouldn’t like a lesson in jumping into water? But when you read the tales of Aya the Drop, you may find the problems she deals with are not so different from those of your own. In the end, it is not so important who makes the most beautiful snowflake as who makes a good friend. And you’ll get to know all this together with Aya as you read.
In Alena Mornštajnová’s new book you’ll learn lots of interesting facts about water, how we need it and how its natural cycle works. What’s more, you’ll have fun.
Aya the Drop is Alena Mornštajnová's second book for children. As with the first, Stráša the Little Ghost / Strašidýlko Stráša (2018), she has worked on it with Galina Miklínová.
Reader age: 5 +
Illustrated by Galina Miklínová
Galina Miklínová (b. 1970) is a well-known Czech illustrator and director/artist of animated films. Her unmistakable art has embellished dozens of children’s books. Her work is familiar to many through the children’s TV series Tales of Dimity / O Kanafáskovi and the animated film The Oddsockeaters / Lichožrouti.
"Friendships, bullying and girls’ complicated relationships are not just matters for the human world. Mornštajnová has successfully transferred these adventures and emotions to the world of water droplets: they, too, have to go to school, and as a result readers also get to discreetly sit in and learn about the water cycle.
(…)
In each of the chapters, the blue associated with water in various forms appears in the inner margins of most of the double pages, where some of the terms used in the text are explained, such as barbel, dew and reservoir. When children (aged 5+ according to publisher’s recommendation) and parents read together, these explanations can be used to explore how a given term is understood by a young reader. (…) The rubberized rainproof cover is also stylish and at the end there are author profiles including originally conceived snorkel-wearing portraits.
Aya the Drop will entertain, the adults will laugh at the puns, the child will listen thoughtfully before laughingly exclaiming it’s not really true! At the same time, Mornštajnová has not only managed to brilliantly combine a joke and an adventure story with a lesson about the life of water, but above all to show real relationships between children."
Martina Siwek Macáková, Iliteratura
"It is a book on a strong subject that is both educational and playful. (…) Its fairy-tale-tinged realism has a wry twist and a joke on its lips — it’s fun. And above all, it gives answers to basic questions when it says: ‘That’s why we water droplets are here in the world, to keep people, plants and everything in nature alive.’ "
Radim Kopáč, MF Dnes
"Aya the Drop is an optimum combination of original fairy tale and unlaboured didacticism."
Jana Machalická, Lidové noviny
