Gugalnica za vse

Anja Štefan (1969) collects and studies folk and fairy tales and also relates and arranges them for children; she also writes her own original fairy tales and poems. The present collection - already her third - brings 23 fairy tales. They are short, and in them appear animals that represent human characters, relations and everyday events. The author's exceptional linguistic dexterity deserves praise; here and there words are subject to an explicit rhythm, because of which they read like rhythmic prose. Her attachment to popular literature is also not to be overlooked (although fruitfully woven into her own poetics), which partially appears in the narrative method and above all in the existential wisdom that the author unobtrusively inserts into her text. The stories are also generally unobtrusively educational. The attractiveness of the stories is rounded off by the illustrations of Marjanca Jemec Božič (1928), who is one of the leading Slovene illustrators; they are distinguished by exemplary illustration and richness of colour. The collection of fairy tales is very suitable for family reading, addressing both children and adults.