BOOK REVIEW WHY DO DUCKS FLY IN A V SHAPE? Author: Pablo Caracol From the reader report by: Livia Deorsola Por que os patos voam em forma de V? is sensitive and charming. In a few pages, it manages to cover more than one theme: the relationship with elders, the learning that comes from this coexistence, the importance of solid foundations on which one can walk throughout life, and the lessons that nature offers us. All that mingled with precise and beautiful drawings. As with all important things that take root, the protagonist’s relationship with her grandfather and his teachings carries great weight. As soon as the grandfather leaves the scene, the images follow the tone, becoming darker, with collages made with realistic illustrations. They are snapshots of the hastened modern life, the portrait of a strongly individualistic society capable of disintegrating the individual. What lights her up again are the teachings of her grandfather and his guidance gleaned from the behavior of birds: “Maybe I should do like the birds and go in search of warmer currents or a favorable wind,” she ponders. Birds have the sought-after quality of having a fixed North. Then, light is cast on the character and also on the images that glow again, albeit discreetly. This double connection — with inherited teachings and with nature — is not uncommon in literature for children. Pablo Caracol, however, achieves great harmony between the tone of the text, made of very short phases, the images, and the very message of freedom and courage, which revolves around an almost rhetorical question that makes us look inward and outward at the same time.
PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS BR
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