The yellow blanket of happiness

In the evenings Mom and I sat in the living room, wrapped in a warm, yellow blanket.
“Shall we watch a movie?” she asked.
“The Sound of Music!” I replied and she laughed, since we had watched it more than a hundred times together.
I was happy and didn’t want to notice that Mom’s smile was slowly disappearing from her face…

A story about parental separation, the struggle, and the healing that follows.

• White Ravens 2019.
• Shortlisted for the Cyprus national literature award for young children (2019).

Reviews:

“With sensitivity and without any didactic or moral intent, award-winning author Marina Michaelidou-Kadi’s story indicates how important it is to maintain a feeling of togetherness, as well as to keep up the rituals so familiar and meaningful for a child. Promising artist Vassilis Koutsogiannis creates an almost photo-realistic likeness of the protagonists’ faces in the central images. Their contrasting and reluctant feelings, on the other hand, become symbolically visible in an imaginative and empathetic way through the complementary colours yellow and violet.” White Ravens Committee

“How tender.  How sweet.  How bitter.  How bittersweet.  How real.  The words of Marina Michaelidou-Kadi flutter like birds and pass through dark clouds to reach clear skies.  Thanks to her narrative skills and the immediacy of her style, she evokes a multitude of emotions, often opposite, but who among us does not already know that this contrast of black and white, hope and despair, happiness and misery, is the very essence of life?” Andreas Kounios, “Alithia” 

“The story deals with divorce in a different way: without analyzing causes and reasons, without describing tensions and providing explanations, it focuses on the feelings of the child who experiences separation and its consequences. Text and images work harmoniously together to create a simple but rich narrative, that challenges us to think, to discuss, and above all, to feel.” Constantina Armeniacou, “The Magical World of Children’s Books”

“Written in a simple but not simplistic way, the story goes a step beyond divorce, touching the issue of parental alienation. Without showing extreme situations or tensions, without unnecessary details of causes, the author focuses on the essence of separation, illuminating the impact of parental alienation on the child’s soul. … The warmth that exudes the images fits with the sensitivity of the text and together, images and text, come to embrace the heart of the reader, creating a book that deserves a place in our library.” Rania Boubouri, “Diastixo”