Czarostatki i parodzieje

Zosia lives with her mother. Her favourite toy is a little plush sheep called Tosia, a gift from her dad. Mum goes to the chemist's 'just for half an hour'… The rest of the story is mostly told through pictures. Wiz-ers and Steam-ards is the first Polish picture book in this style and has an excellent painting technique that is highly original and has a stunning conceptual naïvety. The book contains not only the story of a loss and recovery of something precious, but also architectural representations of towns and cities, starting with Zosia's own little town by the river with its aqueduct, drawbridge, rather light and sluggish road traffic, steamships going placidly down the river, and – most importantly – the candy floss van. Comic-like bubbles are ingeniously used to show the development of what seems to be at first a sad incident, but eventually turns out to be an opportunity for an extraordinary journey, a form of escape from mundane life. Zosia sets off on her magical quest aboard one of the 'wiz-ers and steam-ards'…