It may seem fun at first to tease and annoy everybody around you, but then, when no one will speak to you and you are always alone, it’s not fun at all. That is why the vole Dagesh decided to befriend Mappiq the ground squirrel.

It is an epic tale about their great friendship, about their expeditions into space and to Monte Carlo, and, in the end, about the great challenge they faced when winter came. While the moods of this moving but at the same time endearing text by Jana Šrámková are expressed in two colours (orange for moments of joy and blue for the ones of solitude), the pen-and-ink illustrations of Markéta Prachatická, replete with hatching, are all done in black. She uses the technique, for example, to depict the universe in one instance and the ground squirrel’s fur in another. Although text and illustrations are what make a book, a book, in this case, the amount of space that remains unfilled (by words or drawings) also plays a significant role.

Nominated for Magnesia Litera 2018 Czech Republic