Milada Mašinová, Petra Josefína Stibitzová

Milada Mašinová (b. 1988) studied at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (department of screenplay and dramaturgy). In 2015 she debuted with her first work in the trilogy of comic strips Plague, that is being adapted for the screen.

Petra Josefína Stibitzová (b. 1988) studied at the illustration and graphics studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, under the tutorship of Juraj Horváth and Michaela Kukovič. During her studies, she authored a number of books, but ultimately inclined towards illustrating the texts of other authors. Among her, best-known works are the children’s book Columbus the Pigeon, or her co-operation with Milada Mašinová on the comic strip Plague.

208318_bg

Cats and other Tales of Fear   

by Milada Mašinová, Petra Josefína Stibitzová (ill.)

March 2016, 152 pages

Imaginative book for young readers who appreciate in equal measure the text and the light and stylized illustrations.

A pretty teacher, beloved by all the boys, sits down on a rollercoaster with her students – little does she know what horror awaits her… A shipwreck is floating in the middle of the ocean with a motley pair of castaways – a girl and a young man who is completely detached from reality and loses himself in pseudo-intellectual thoughts… A young maid suddenly finds herself out of work and has nowhere to go… A boy ignored by his parents doesn’t know that the ocean is raging because of him. These are the situations in which the young heroes of the six short stories in this collection find themselves. The main theme is love in all its forms: siblings, parents and lovers. Jealous, selfish, possessive and self-centred love. These short stories by Milada Mašínová stand out due to their exceptional, horror-like atmosphere and precise, crystal clear style. Both of these qualities infuse the stories with an atmosphere of pervasive fear, anxiety and strangeness. Illustrations by young illustrator Petra Josefína Stibitzová complement the book.

 

“We may speak of a kinship with classic fairy tales such as The Little Prince or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or with the wave in which Poe wrote his The Fall of the House of Usher or Julien Gracq his novel The Castle of Argol. The text is far deeper than the images, not only due to its sombre finale.”

MF Dnes

“The author excels in her singular vision – in her fictional words we find features which are familiar from romantic fiction, but these are merely cleverly utilised backdrops onto which the author sets her texts about how evil originates.”

Právo

ukazka-1