2023-10-18 10:59:49
The writer from Girona Carles Sala has taken the 39th edition of the El Vaixell de Vapor Award of children’s literature for Madame Slim. For its part, Predestinats, by Jesús Castillón, was the winner of the 33rd Gran Angular Award, aimed at youth audiences. Both awards have one financial endowment of 11,000 euros each and both works hit bookstores today.
Sala, one of the most recognized names in children’s literature in Catalan, adds a new award. After winning awards such as the Josep Maria Folch i Torres (2009 and 2022), the Barcanova (2007 and 2009) or receiving on two occasions the honorable mention White Ravensnow repeats with Vaixell de Vapor, which already won in 2009, for a story that, according to the jury, “hooks from beginning to end”, with archetypal characters “very well built” and twists in the language that are “very fun”.
Madame Esvelt tells the story of a hot-tempered baroness full of romance who treats everyone with contempt and who is obsessed with being thin and wearing a new dress every day.
When Arlet talks to Mau, his best friend, he discovers that he and many other children in the village sleepwalk each night to the baroness’s cottage, who makes them eat mysterious meatballs that leave them enchanted. With the help of his violin teacher and two very special wheels, he will have to foil his evil plans.
According to Sala, behind a story of adventure and mystery hides an issue as serious as the obsession with the image and the relationship it has with food. The author assures that the idea arose from some characters that came to his mind and that, once they were clear, the novel was articulated around them.
In fact, he claims that the children’s audience makes him feel more “comfortable” because adults find it “more difficult to enter into different fantasies”. On the other hand, however, he recognizes that one of the challenges is getting them to “not disconnect”. “If they are not hooked on the second or third page, they can lose the thread, which is why there are always puzzles to solve”, he admits.
It is aimed at readers between eight and ten years old and has illustrations by Anna Baquero.
On the other hand, the jury of the Grand Angular Award has chosen Predestinats by Jesús Castillón because it is explained as a “perfect circle” that opens from a “very shocking” event and that closes “giving meaning to the story” with a “surprising” structure.
In this novel, Aurora lives in a future where men have become extinct and society is made up exclusively of women. When the time comes to choose his university studies, he chooses the Visiting School, a faculty surrounded by secrecy.
According to the official version, there they prepare the students to search for a cure that will allow them to have male children again, soon, but they will discover the strange rules of the center, one of which is not to fall in love.
What he doesn’t suspect is that, by breaking them, he can change the fate of humanity.
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