Downstream
Text: Pepe Maestro
Drawings: Translation Mercè
López: Patxi Zubizarreta
EREIN, 2023

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This is the first number in the Bioletako sekretutegia collection; the second is in the Surprise. This first issue presents Bioleta, an eight-year-old special girl, and her grandmother. “Violet is passionate about reading. Read everything: the skins and leaves of the trees, the traces of the animals, as well as the movements of seeds, insects and birds… Violet is eight years old and two braids, wrapped in a wicker wire, and a wonderful grandmother.” So the book starts, and as the reader can see, Bioleta looks like a very pretty girl.

In the book we are presented the diaries of the girl, the walks he takes with the dog Barrabas mastin, the secret cave he has in the river, how he enjoys the affairs of the animals… as well as the treatment they have with a hunter, he and Barrabas, who is always in the custody of the dog.

The book is therefore an agile and entertaining book, accompanied by few texts and illustrations, with loves of the hypothetical reader and facts and reflections that can join the protagonist. The illustrations also make this all easier and enjoyable.

But the book has a special merit. Writing, the rhythm of telling history: “It goes in a raft. Next to the barabbas, downstream. Bioleta starts beating, measuring the strength of the river, trying to adjust to the rhythm of the running water. It’s an interview: water and it.” Near poetics, the narrative is light, but not tender.

The story also has a point of mystery or danger; when they find the mark of a hunter, “suddenly, a shot. And the river has remained silent. Silence invades the riverbank. Everything has stopped overnight. The brave violet has also silenced more than the stone.”

The happy ending also provokes the reader’s smile, but above all the desire to know more stories that Bioleta lives in her grandmother’s house.