The Key

A poetic tale about how a child’s imagination can be excited by something as trivial as the discovery of an old key.

Sometimes children just do not feel like going to school. When a little curly-haired boy with a school bag finds a lost key in the street, he uses it to unlock fantasy chambers in his head. Pavel Čech’s paintings, drawing inspiration from the style of well-known Czech classic illustrators Jiří Trnka and Jan Černý, accompany a modestly sized libretto commenting on the landscapes of opportunity that the boy explores. Later, with the help of a hole in his pocket, the “imaginary relay baton” is passed on to the boy’s schoolmate and a new portion of adventures about freedom, bound by neither time nor space, gets a chance to testify to the powers of a boy’s soul as expressed in dreams.

The story is built around the author’s whole-page illustrations. This book is for very young and grown-up readers alike. 

Reader age: 4+, Bilderbuch