Six-month-old Anička lives with her parents in an old house in Černošice. Soon she is drawn into its past, personified by the mysterious figure of Mrs Majerová. Together with the other inmates of her institution - the dogs Berta and Lisa, the turtle Kryšpín, Veverčák and the talking brook - they gradually discover the story of Lenka, the first ward of Mrs Majerová. Water, trees, even furniture all come to life during the thrilling, sometimes haunting search for Lenka's lost heritage - everything has its place in the book. The plot is also interspersed with witty rhyming observations by the clever Squirrel.
The journey of the main characters is full of pitfalls and surprises, but after overcoming them, the central detective plot comes to a happy ending. But what about the house itself, and who is the mysterious Mrs Majer? The reader will get the explanation in the last chapters of the book, which, through historical data and a photographic appendix, will bring him back to reality and help him to find his way around what was only a dream and what was reality in the fairy tale narrative.
The author works with several time planes, mixing real characters with fictional ones. He plays with language, which in both prose and poetic sections adds character and liveliness to the normally inanimate characters, whose actions and speeches contribute to the overall flow and readability of the text. The original story of Anička, the talking brook and other inmates of Mrs Majerová's institute flowing from the past to the future and back again is perfectly illustrated by the dynamic illustrations by Eva Kot'áátková, who manages to capture in a clear line the sometimes almost ungraspable (and at times perhaps a little harder to understand) plot on the borderline between reality and dream.
Gabriela Michálková
Petr Koťátko: Anička, mluvící potok a další chovanci ústavu paní Majerové. Ilustrace Eva Koťátková. Praha: Meander, 2019.
The review was created at the Department of Journalism of FSV UK under the supervision of PhDr. Jana Čeňková, Ph.D.
