Cat attic

A cat attic is an unusual book that combines two forms of narrative - text and graphic.

The first story happens these days, in Sweden, where a 12-year-old girl of Mona lives with her mother. Grandfather’s office was their house, since mom, changing several places, was left without work and earnings. For two years, her husband has been considered missing, and a woman has been experiencing hard things. Mona and mother are forced to hide when visitors come to the office. The girl misses both the father and the girlfriend who moved to Shanghai. She feels lonely and lost.

Once grandfather invites her to earn extra money - to help him deal with things in the old mansion, which he was instructed to sell customers. Ghosts clearly live on the old villa Belva - Mona understands this, barely crossing the threshold of the house. The Gothic atmosphere of Villa is fraught with many secrets and riddles. Who were her owners? Why are there no photos anywhere? And why does grandfather behave so strangely and is so well oriented inside the house?

The second story is a grandfather’s story about his childhood during the Second World War. The history of this house is presented mainly in the form of color illustrations - we seem to be inside the film and see everything with the eyes of grandfather many years ago. It is noteworthy that the color in the book appears at the mention of the past of the Villa Belva, and the present, where Mona lives, is black and white as the sadness of the girl.

How to read a book
The book has a secret from the past, and a ghost, and the story of the war, and the story of friendship and betrayal, about love and losses, and an unexpected denouement. Part of the story (the story of the grandfather of Mona) is conveyed in the form of illustrations from a minimum of text. Readers are invited to think about, to give up this story from excellent illustrations, to understand what remains of the “behind the scenes”.

In the graphic part of the book there are a lot of references to the works of painting - Hilma Af Clint, Helena Sherfbek, Vincent Van Gogh. You can try to find them all.

For whom this book
For children aged 11 years.

For adults who love beautiful books and nostalgic stories.

About the author
Author and illustrator from Sweden. Joint work on the book took more than two years from them: they decided to make a picture book, but not 32 pages, but on more than 350. This is not the first project that Helen and Christine work on together. Their joint book is “Your turn, Andrian” (2015) was nominated for a number of prestigious awards: Augustpriset (2015), Bologna Ragazzi Award (2016) Och Nils Holgerson Placketten (2016), White Raven (2016), Pope Francis Project (2017) Och FrankfurtMassans Topp 100-Lista DPictus (2018)