Topic: Family and friendship
List of entries
A classic rhyming tale about the meaning of Christmas and commerce. The sheer thought of the nearing festivities so enrages the green monster everyone knows as simply the Grinch that he plans to steal the whole celebration in the middle of the night.
This annotated picture book provides instructions on how to attract a ghost, how to tell if he is real, how to play with him, what costume to pick, and how to trick-or-treat together. It is a colourfully illustrated children’s book showing that ghosts are not that scary and adds wonderfully to the Halloween mood in […]
This Victorian Gothic novel is about moral decay and the evanescence of beauty and youth. Young Dorian Gray meets the charismatic Lord Henry Wotton at Basil Hallward’s studio by whom he is currently being painted. Basil sees Dorian as his new muse, infatuated by his beauty. Dorian is enthralled by the Lord’s hedonistic world view […]
Years after breaking up, Bill and Mary randomly meet on the street. Despite the time that has passed and the two of them having new partners and children, Mary still seems to be emotionally attached to Bill. But after a short exchange of words, they go their separate ways. This short story shows that what […]
A classic children’s novel about poverty and wealth, humility, kindness and greed. Charlie is an eleven-year-old boy who loves chocolate and lives with his parents and grandparents in a little hut close to a big city. They do not have a lot of money, but Charlie and his family live a happy life until Charlie’s […]
A dystopian movie drama about power, subversion and the lengths some people will go to protect their family: In Katniss’ world, survival is everything. She lives in a poor, rural district of a future version of the North-American continent re-shaped by a disaster. For the meagre support provided by the Capitol, all the districts have […]
A coming-of-age movie about family, rootlessness and uncovering who you really are: The viewer is invited into three stages of protagonist Chiron’s life. As a kid nicknamed “Little”, Chiron is picked on by his peers while he has to grow up without a father. As a teenager trying to survive school, he has to realize […]
A Shakespearean tragedy from Early Modernism / Renaissance about madness, revenge, political intrigues, love and loss. The king of Denmark is dead, and soon his widow Gertrud marries Claudius, the former king’s brother. Prince Hamlet is depressed because of his father’s death and angry at his mother for remarrying so quickly. One night his father’s […]
A humourous coming-of-age graphic novel about love, friendship, teenage troubles (alcohol, sexuality, violence…) and intercultural contact. Junior is a 14-year old Native-American teenager who grows up in the Spokane Indian Reservation in the State of Washington. Being bullied because of his special needs, he decides to visit an all-white public high school off the reservation, […]
A modern ‘from rags to riches’ tale about believing in both fate and love against all odds. In Q & A, the inspiration for the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, Swarup tells the story of Ram Muhammed Thomas, who participates in India’s game show “Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?”. When Ram answers question after question […]
A dystopian novel about global warming, environmental pollution, love and the loss of biodiversity. In the year 2025, 75-year-old Tyrone works as a caretaker at the estate of a wealthy rockstar in California which functions as the habitat for animals that are the last of their kind. Climate change has caused mass extinctions and rice […]
A coming-of-age novel about patriarchy, racism, social injustices and rape. Esperanza is a teenage girl living with her family in Chicago. In short episodes she tells the reader about her life, growing up on Mango Street in a poor Mexican-American community. Esperanza grows up, makes friends, falls in love and endures sexual assault. Through all […]
This young adult novel set in a small town in Pennsylvania explores themes such as racism, loss, inequality and homelessness. Jeffrey Magee is a young, homeless drifter and ends up in Two Mills, a town that is strictly divided into a white and a black community. Jeffrey visits both communities, experiences racial tensions and tries […]
A family saga about migration, destiny, gender relations and intersexuality. Cal was born as Calliope, the daughter of a Greek-American family in Michigan. But during puberty, the girl develops more and more male features and Cal finds out that he is intersexual and feels more male than female. He retells the story of his family. […]
A historical novel about friendship, betrayal, discrimination, guilt and redemption. Amir lives in the USA and remembers his childhood in Kabul, entwined with Afghanistan’s troubled history. How the communists took over, the Soviets invaded, how he escaped and settled in the USA together with his father who struggled to adapt to the new environment. But […]
Set in Nigeria during the late 19th century, this tragic novel problematises the battle between tradition and change, the role of colonialism, religion and patriarchy. Okonkwo is a respected member of his community, the Igbo people. When white missionaries arrive, Okonkwo’s son, like many others, converts to Christianity. Tensions rise between the natives and the […]
This anthropomorphic novel full of rabbits tells the tale of social unrest, community and hope, all kick-started by man-made environmental destruction. Fiver, a young rabbit with a sixth sense, is part of the Sandleford warren. He starts having disturbing visions of his home’s destruction and, along with his older brother Hazel, tries, to no avail, […]
This illustrated short fiction about hope, love, feeling lost and life itself discovers the remarkable and most unusual friendship of a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse. Following the quartet on their journey, the reader explores with them the power of imagination, as well as universal questions and answers. The picture book is […]