The incredible story of the birdgirl and the terrible boy

That boy spent his hours up a tree. His mother shouted at him from the window; you’re a terrible boy! And so on every day of the year, so many times and so often that he forgot his own name. But on a strange day in May, the terrible boy found in the top of the tree a small bird´s egg…

In the field of identity, the name is related to the questions: Who am I? Who are we? The absence of the name, as happens with the main character in this story, supposes a change in the identity, to be taken over by a negative adjective, because of what others thought of him.

The terrible boy is always recriminated and only becomes aware of affection when he sees the love with which mothers treat their children; in this moment he recognizes an affection he had never had as a basic need, necessary for survival.

Like the Calvino´s rampant baron, the main character in this story stands at a distance in the heights from a world he doesn’t share; a distance that offers him liberty and a new perspective on the world, on the people and the happenings from which he can reconstruct.

We find ourselves in front of a book that gives us material for reflection on the importance of affection and helps to see the details that can be missed but which in reality make up the personality of an individual.

With a bi-chromatisism of reds and blacks, Susanne Jansen presents us with a very personal imaginative narrative, with foreshortenings and impossible perspectives, working the psychological detail of the characters, combining hardness and sweetness in faces where the looks have a special importance. A plastic work of great impact and expressive strength, in the first work that this acclaimed German illustrator publishes in Spain.

Text by Anna Castagnoli Illustrations by Susanne Janssen Translation by Mark W. Heslop