
Shoes with Wings
Author: Maria Papayanni
Greek IBBY Award
Little Rosa is growing up with her father, a fisherman who writes poetry, names cats after poets and speaks in poetry verses. On account of a movement disorder Rosa is suffering from, they move into a groundfloor apartment, also known as The Kingdom of Cats. There, Rosa will make new friends like Anna, a formerly great pianist who lives in her car. It doesn’t take much for everything to shift, and for a pursued little Rosa to follow Gabito into the Underwater Kingdom. There she will make friends who use words and language, instead of money, to buy doughnuts. She will attempt to understand why dead languages are so important to these people. Until then it had never occurred to Rosa that languages die and that fairytales die with them; music and dreams too Rosa will dive headlong into the adventure of growing up, in the most unconventional of ways. Step by step she will overcome her movement handicap and discover all that is seen and unseen. All that is and all that pretends to be.