Tale
Sapramiška
Not translated into English
Svetlana Makarovič · 1976
Synopsis
One Sunday morning, Sapra, a mouse who lives in a barn at the edge of a meadow, tries to crack a hazelnut for her breakfast and breaks a tooth. She sets off into the forest to look for help: the hare brushes her off without ceremony, the squirrel wheedles a nut out of her, and only the frog agrees to go with her to Dr Detel, the dentist. On the way back, she still has to escape the cat, and the nuts she brings home do not all keep their promises.
Context
The tale appeared as a picture book in 1976 and was often reissued, with the images of different illustrators, including Marija Lucija Stupica and Gorazd Vahen. In 1986 it became a radio play and, on 17 October of the same year, a production of the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, directed by Nace Simončič, with puppets by Jaka Judnič, in which the author lends her voice to the mouse. The story had already been staged in Nova Gorica in 1978, and it was again in Kranj in 2000.
Who it is for
A short picture book, to be read aloud to the youngest, from age three, for its cunning and courageous mouse.
Prizes and reception
More than a thousand performances of the puppet show, played without interruption in Ljubljana; a fountain in the city bears the name of the mouse.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.