The one half of the jar

White Ravens: Special mention

Little Eleni is growing up on her native island, Lesvos. A narrow strait of blue sea separates her from the land across the water. Her relationship with her grandfather familiarises her with nature, life, her own island, its history and also the land on the other side of the sea. Time runs like a river, carrying with it lots of stories, watermelons made into beautiful lanterns, baskets with broken ancient jars, tasty sweets, embroidered Turkish ladies’ mules. Time, like river, brings and takes things away. But not only things – it took away her grandfather, too. Eleni, now a grown up woman and a teacher herself, repeats with the same love the journeys to the places of the myths to the children of her island. With them lives the miracle of the broken earthenware bits and pieces that make up … one half of the jar! Eleni and the youngsters search for the other half of the jar and so the readers discover that what separates people is also what joins and brings them together. On the land opposite, the other half of ourselves is to be found. The other half of the jar!

The renowned educationalist Photeine Phrankule masterfully tells the superbly illustrated story of Eleni and her beloved grandfather, who brings the people, nature and the past of her native Lesbos close to her. He teaches her to preserve memories like dispersed and broken pieces of antique pottery. After his death, Eleni keeps coming back to these sights of her childhood as a grown-up woman to be true to his legacy. For everything tells of the ancestors' labour and sweat but also of the miseries of the refugees from both countries: Here is Lesbos, there is Asia-Minor, the former Greek home, and in between, the silver, starry strip of the Aegean Sea. Surely, the other half of the collected pottery must lie on the opposite, Turkish coast. (Source: White Ravens)