One day, when author Clare Azzopardi was at the playground with her young nephew, he turned to her and said: “If mamà dies, can I live with you?”
That was the day that the author decided to write a book for children about the loss of a loved one. And that was how the story of Il-Qtates ta’ max-Xatt was born.
Now, a couple of years on, it has been given visual life by illustrator Lisa Falzon and is being published by Merlin Publishers.
Azzopardi did not go about the tale of loss in a conventional way, rather, the stars of the book are the cats living in a public garden in what looks very much like Sliema. The highlight of the cats’ day is when they are visited by an elderly couple. Nannu and nanna open their tatty old suitcase and out come dishes of delicious food, for each and every cat.
But one day, the old couple do not turn up. The cats whimper and whine, until they can mew no more. Days turn into weeks and the cats grow thin with hunger, but it is not the void of food that they miss…
“Children think a lot about the possibility of losing a relative dear to them. Using cats as protagonists is a way of approaching the topic indirectly,” said Azzopardi. Although the book talks about death, it is full of love. It is useful in helping children understand how death is an inevitable part of ageing and how life continues after the sadness of bereavement.
This is another ground-breaking Merlin Publishers picture book which tackles a sensitive issue with the illustrations grounded in a very typical Maltese context for its Maltese readers.
“I wanted to take away some of the things in our lives we are culturally bred to see as eyesores or problems of urban living. Things like high rises, cranes, electrical wires and air conditioners – and sadly yes, stray cats and the elderly – we tend to see them as issues to be fixed,” said Falzon, who is now based in Berlin. In dreamy colours and the pastel-crayon style of digital art, she elevated all these “maligned elements” to the same level of “dreamscape beauty”. Falzon describes the book as a big challenge but the one she is “most proud of”.
Il-Qtates ta’ max-Xatt has no fixed target age. It is ideal both for reading to children when these are still very young and eventually for reading by children themselves when they are slightly older. Apart from being an emotional story, perfect to nurture a love of reading, the play on words, alliterations, rhymes and rhythms makes it fun.
Il-Qtates ta’ max-Xatt is available from all leading bookshops or online.
www.merlinpublishers.com
