Circus on Rainis Street

The book is a story for preschool and younger school-age children about friendship, making friends and the ability to find common ground between different generations, homes, species, breeds, nationalities, affiliations, and imperfections, each retaining its uniqueness and peculiarities. As author says, "it is a completely invented story based on what was seen, experienced and heard on Rainis Street in a small town in Latvia, talking to local residents".

Community building plays an important role in the story, it encourages to act as a unifier rather than to fight against something. By community, the reader can understand both a microcosm - a family, a close friend - and larger communities - a street, a neighborhood, a city.

In the idea of the book, the involvement of the reader, becoming the hero of the book, without initially realizing it, is important. It succeeds thanks to the masterful collaboration of Luīze Pastore, book illustrator Ieva Jurjāne and book designer Aleksejs Muraško. In addition, the last, eighth chapter of the book is like a visual story - a visual continuation of the text, a "silent story", created by Ieva Jurjāne. "In the eighth chapter, the daily life of the residents of Rainis Street continues, only without textual explanation. It is as real and true as it is paradoxical and exaggerated like the circus and the world of childhood in general. With the lightness inherent in the game, the tasks accompanying the illustrations are designed for attention training and the relaxed learning of basic preschool skills - for recognizing colors, numbers, letters, shapes," said the artist. The publishing house is convinced that "Circus on Rainis Street" is a necessary book in today's world, it is a book for a better society.

Publisher: Neputns; Illustrator: Ieva Jurjāne