EDEBÉ Children's Literature Award 2019: SAFARIby Maite Carranza
According to Dani, talking is useless. After an accident at the zoo years ago, she decided not to speak anymore and since then she has communicated with sign language. Being mute means having to put up with ridicule and provocations at school, however it benefits him in his observation and listening skills.
Hoping to get Dani to talk again, her family decides to go on a safari to Africa. Just arriving, a series of events lead the boy to be left helpless in the African savanna. It will be a female chimpanzee, Jupiter, who will adopt Dani as her child and open the doors to her new chimpanzee family, with whom Dani will surprisingly feel and communicate better than in her social environment.
Dani's experience vindicates our society's lack of empathy with animals and demonstrates how wonderful non-verbal and emotional communication is. The first-person experience reveals the strong ties between humans and animals and instructs us in the social organization and customs of primates.
The other protagonist of the story, the young primate student Mary Jo, upon meeting her idol in person in the field of chimpanzee research, discovers the true face of the scientist. The doctor's ridicule, abuse of power, and unprofessionalism lead Mary Jo to fight for her dignity.
safari It highlights machismo in the field of science and advocates for female independence and worth. Mari Jo, like the female Jupiter, has to assert her knowledge and intelligence against the machismo of the supposedly dominant bosses.
Work presented in Catalan and Spanish aimed at readers aged 10 and up.
Publication: March 2019
Fragment:
"I do not know where I am.
I don't see anything, my head hurts a lot, I can barely move it, and I feel a buzzing like they were cutting it with a chainsaw.
Sorry, I correct myself, I think I'm confused.
The noise is not exactly that of a chainsaw (I am not an expert in chainsaws) I would say that it sounds something like the growls of an animal (I am not an expert in animals either).
Although thinking about it... An animal?
It can't be, but it is, it sounds like the dull roar of a mad dog before attacking.
I want to think, but there is no way. I suspect I hit myself, that's why I have a bump on my forehead and my memory has been erased. No matter how much I rack my brain, I don't know who I am or what my name is. The only memory I have is of a charming girl who smiles, talks incessantly, and her name is Mary Jo, that's for sure. When I think about her, my mouth fills with a sweet, chocolatey flavor, and I feel like hugging her even though she's not with me. I think it's a nice memory.
Suddenly, something grabs my arm and a howl, this time very close, so close that the breath burns my skin, forces me to open my eyes.
I close them again terrified.
It's a wild beast, half a span from my face, sniffing me. I have seen a huge snout and long, sharp teeth, I feel his breath on my left cheek and the heat of his huge body on my shirt.”
Maite Carranza
Maite Carranza is a writer for young people with more than thirty years of professional experience and fifty titles to her credit. Translated into forty languages, she is currently one of the Catalan authors with the most international presence. Throughout her career she has combined writing novels, also for adult audiences, with television scriptwriting, teaching, theater and literary talks. Her books for young people and children, from humor, fantasy or thriller, dissect our society without avoiding uncomfortable or politically incorrect topics. Family, power, abuse and injustice are topics treated naturally by Maite Carranza, who believes, above all, that young people must change the world through irreverence, imagination and dreams.
Born in Barcelona in 1958, she studied anthropology at the University of Barcelona and worked as a high school literature teacher in the eighties. She became known in 1986 with her first work Young Adult, which won the Critics' award. After completing a master's degree in screenwriting, in the early nineties, she began her career as a television scriptwriter for more than two decades.
His literary work for children and young people, transgressive and committed, has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Critics' Award on three occasions: 1986, 2010 and 2018, the National Young Adult Literature Award 2011, the Edebé 2002 and 2010, the Cervantes Chico award 2014 and, more recently, the Atrapallibres and Joaquim Ruyra award 2018.
Her best-known novels are the fantastic and feminist trilogy, The War of the Witches, translated into more than 30 languages, the award-winning thriller on child sexual abuse Palabras envenenadas, the most recent The movie of life (with film project) about child poverty and A bullet to remember, which sheds light on the silenced Spanish civil war.
Maite Carranza has been founder of the Association of Screenwriters of Catalonia, of the APE Platform for the defense of LIJ creators and is currently the President of the Association Escrivim who fights for the rights of writers.