The main hero of Tereza Šiklová's book is a nameless giant, for whom time passes many times slower than for each of us. One of his days is as long as a whole year in human perception. But the giant has many other features that simply transcend us. Apart from his obvious superior size, his smile and curiosity never leave him. He may live in the same world as we do, but because he moves so slowly, or perhaps because he perceives the world in a completely different way than we do, and he is able to view all our little woes and hurried destinies from a bird's eye view, no human being will even notice him during the roughly fifty-page illustrated narrative.
The giant not only fascinates the youngest readers, but is even similar to them. He shares with them a childlike joy in a world he doesn't quite understand, and although he commits a lot of mischief along the way, he is not evil. But the "huge" cutie doesn't stay close only to the little ones. He can even have an almost therapeutic effect on parents. Indeed, the calm and detachment that permeates the entire book makes the reader pause. It shows him how much suffering someone as small as a human being can cause himself. Between the lines, one can find unspoken advice directed mainly to adults: "Be here and now again for a while."
Tereza Šiklová is first and foremost a skilled artist and she has managed to underline the simple story with playful and imaginative illustrations. The pen-and-ink drawings teeter exactly on the edge between the skill of a child (a giant or human figure) and the skills of a skilled illustrator (a city, a stadium, scenery), while Šiklová manages to highlight the story's underlying theme of "transcendence". Everything is underlined by the colourful and at the same time subtle colouring, which seems to have been created by the hand of a preschooler.
Tomáš Kulhavý
Tereza Šiklová. Obr. Praha: Baobab, 2021.
The review was created at the Department of Journalism of FSV UK under the supervision of PhDr. Jana Čeňková, Ph.D.
