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TO REQUEST: The themes of “The Sun Watcher” are existential, and Lisa Aisato’s illustrations are full of moods, colors and contrasts, writes the VG critic. Photo: Lisa Aisato
Maja Lunde and Lisa Aisato’s seasonal project is easy to love, but the fairy tale book “The Sun Watcher” does not reach the older sister.
“The Snow Sister” is one of the most successful children’s books in recent years and has so far been printed in an incredible 250,000 copies. There will also be a Hollywood movie and the rights to the book have been sold to 29 countries.
Read VG’s Review of “The Snow Sister”: Roll the Dice 6!
Now that book number two of the planned seasonal quartet is available, expectations are soaring. It is almost impossible to find them.
“The Sun Guardian” is also not as robust and emotionally engaging as the first book.
But the project can only be desired. The books are meticulously illustrated and are more expensive than the Bibles: upholstered in exclusive binding with gold print, ground cover and thread binding. The themes are existential and the illustrations, full of moods, colors and contrasts, fit perfectly with the text.
THE SNOW SISTER FOLLOW-UP: Maja Lunde and Lisa Aisato come out with “The Sun Watcher,” which is the sequel to the smash hit “The Snow Sister,” and volume two of what will be a full-season quartet. Photo: Ola Vatn / VG
This book is about Lilja, who lives with her grandfather in a place where the sun has disappeared and the rain falls incessantly. Everyone in town is on the brink of starvation. It is only kept alive thanks to the vegetables that Grandpa grows in her greenhouse and distributes every three days. Vegetables turn out to be Lilja’s way to the sun and heat.
Do you have it with you? The success of the book “The Snow Sister” becomes a Hollywood movie
Too soon he discovers that they are not from the greenhouse, but from the terrifying spruce forest that is nearby. And the forest is full of magic, as the forests in fairy tales should be.
When this adventure does not take hold of me completely, it is because the story alternates between past, present and point in a choppy way. Many long sentences are used unnecessarily to describe something simple. And the two most important people in the plot, Lilja and the watcher of the sun, do not feel alive.
Lilja sees herself from the outside and has an adult vocabulary. She is now a straight child heroine with enormous powers who has little to do with reality, but is grieved when she is angry at her own curiosity, for example, because it gets her in trouble.
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Climate change is not a word to be found in the book, but rather in the readers’ consciousness when extreme weather ravages and food week is absent.
“Solvokteren” is a tribute to spring at the expense of the season we are in now. And it is the representations of the eternal apocalyptic autumn that remain in my memory, perhaps because this is how I experience the world now.
In that sense, the premiere of “The Snow Sister” in October was more strategic. A Christmas calendar filled with falling snow, family feelings and hope is exactly what you need to get through November.
I’ll get this book out again when spring approaches, and the grass will be as green as the cover. Because I have faith in the seasonal quartet, even though this year’s book seems to be quickly written and published at the wrong time.
Reviewed by: Kristine isaksen
