SPLETNA TRGOVINA

LEVSTIK AWARD

The Levstik Award for Lifetime Achievements in Children’s Literature (Writing)




Polonca Kovač

2/19/1937

Polonca Kovač is a storyteller – a writer whose either realistic or fantastical fairy-tale narratives about animals innovatively and successfully combine the instructive with the literary. The author herself has stated that she first of all tries to observe and understand the time in which she lives, adding: ‘All my stories have sprung out of the joy I feel at being able to witness this time’.

Five Pups Looking for the Right One. (Odlomek)
Even while sleeping, she would flick open one eye from time to time and count: ‘One, two, three, four, five! Oh, what joy, five snouts – five tails, all is well.’ The days went by as the little sausage dogs grew, giving their sausage dog mummy plenty of work and worry. How much those babes would eat! And how much they peed afterwards! And if three of them slept soundly, the other two would surely cry their lungs out to the sky and back. And then the fleas! A mother of five truly is stricken with all the plagues of this world. And yet, the sausage dog mummy could neither sleep nor eat for all her happiness. Time and again she counted: five snouts – five tails, and each lovelier than the next.