Equality Love Respect Violence
Garmmans hemmelighet
Summary:
No-one can tell the twins Johanne and Hanne apart, except for Garmann, who knows how mean Hanne is. Johanne and Garmann find a flying saucer in the woods and turn it into a secret hideaway. [Source: Electre]
Edited by:
Université Sorbonne Paris Nord
Author(s):
Hole, Stian
Illustrator(s):
Hole, Stian
Translator(s):
Bartlett, Don
Publisher:
Eedermans Books for Young Readers
City:
Grand Rapids
Year:
2011
Pages:
56
ISBN:
9780802854001
Age Range:
6 - 10
Language:
EN
Original Language:
NO
Keywords:
Equality, Love, Respect, Violence
Comment:
The latest installment of Garmann’s adventures. His hopes and worries are embodied in Johanne, now very different from her twin Hanne. Garmann and Johanne discover a space capsule that has crash landed in the forest. The object and its surroundings trigger observations, suppositions, and reveries in a game they play with each other but hide from everyone else. The images reflect the characters’ relationship with their surroundings, with public spaces teeming with silhouettes, calmer natural settings like the sky, the forest, the pond they swim in, the animals, and private spaces like bedrooms that are a half-way house between sociability and privacy. The space capsule is a haven, a refuge, and a base camp for all their explorations. The blend of naturalist style and fantastical and symbolic allusions lend the drawings and collages an eerie, hypnotic presence, heightened by the use of chiaroscuro, unexpected colours, and distorted perspectives. The text is a capricious flow in a variety of registers, reproducing whatever can be uttered in verbal form. Garmann’s secret is space, where acceptance, irreverence, constraints, freedom, solitude, and love all go hand in hand. [Claudine Hervouet, La Revue des livres pour enfants]