PICTURE BOOK
“THE LOST MALICH OR THE STORY ABOUT TWO ISLANDS”
Primary school "Valentin Klarin" Preko is the parent school for all regional schools on the island of Ugljan. One of these schools is the PO (regional department) of Poljana. Children from Poljana and Sutomišćica attend that school. This school year 2021/2022, Poljana school was attended by students of the second and fourth grades (the so-called combination). Among the numerous activities of that small school, the "Creating a story" workshop was held throughout the semester. On Fridays, Bruno Ćurko from the Petit Philosophy visited the school and slowly, step by step, created a story with the students. From a few opening sentences, the story grew and grew each week, until it reached an 18-card story. Through the workshops, the children got down to business seriously, inventing, adding and shaping adventures, under guidance of Bruno and teacher Milena. The students illustrated the story, Josip Guć proofread it, Ivana Odža reviewed it, and Martina Perić prepared the graphics. This is how our story and the book "The Lost Malich/The Story of Two Islands" came to be. Twelve students came up with and shaped the story. Together with the presenters, the writers of this story called themselves “Dišpetoži” from PO Poljana.
WHAT IS THE STORY ABOUT?
Our story "Izgubljeni malich / the story of two islands" is a story about little beings (Cro. “Malići”), cheerful and mischievous forest spirits who once inhabited all our islands. Today, they are still present on the island of Cres, where they are called “mašmalići”. For our story, we researched all the sources and created a little Dišpet who accidentally ended up in Sutomišća on the island of Ugljan from Creška Tramuntana. There he meets the girl Mija and the boy Emil. Emil and Mia try to help Dišpet to return to Cres. In search of his friend, Kikirikić also arrives at Ugljan. Both Kikirikić and Dišpeto, attract the attention of the residents with their various misadventures and adventures in Poljana and Sutomišćica. Nevertheless, in the end they return, together with Darko, Mija and Emil, to Cres and to the Tramuntana forest. All together in their adventures, they encounter the problems of sea pollution, islands and environmental pollution in general. Although the little ones used to live on all the islands of the Adriatic, today they remain only on Cres, on Tramuntana, because it is still a dense forest where they can successfully hide. How many animal and plant species have we lost just like that because we do not take care of our environment, nature, islands and the sea. However, this story ends with the strange question "Is this a story of hope?".
From the REVIEW:
“Within a literary work, the agreement between the end and the beginning is not unusual - the end of a literary work often returns to its beginning, or the beginning is a premonition of the end. Methodological science also refers to the necessity of the internal connection of all components of the teaching unit, among other things, to the connection between its end and beginning. The picture book “Izgubljeni malich / A story of two islands” encourages you to start from the beginning, that is, to answer the question with which the picture book ends: "Is this a story of hope?" Yes! This is a story of hope; moreover, hope, although it is not explicitly mentioned anywhere except in the final thought, imposes itself as an unavoidable thought of the picture book. The hope for a better tomorrow does not rest only on the ecological idea, which is one of the basic guidelines of the story, it is visible in the interest of the person/child in the story, in listening and creating the story on the basis of the tradition and homeland that shaped it.”
doc. dr. sc. Ivana Odža
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split