Lida Dykstra

Wolken fan wol

ISBN 90 5615 032 4
Yllustraasjes: Hubertus de Jong
128 siden, priis   12,03

English

Wolken fan wol is in bewurking fan seis ferhalen út de ferneamde Metamorfoazen fan de Romeinske skriuwer Ovidius (43 f. Kr. - 17 n. Kr.) It giet oer de machtsstriid tusken goaden en  minsken en it blykt dat goaden krekt sokke swakke karakters hawwe as stjerlingen: se binne faak jaloersk, dom, erchtinkend en benammen opljeppend. Wa't mar efkes in foet ferkeard set fynt himsels werom yn it lichem fan in bist, beam of blom.

Yn febrewaris 2001 krige Wolken fan wol de Welpeprint foar it bêst fersoarge Fryske jongereinboek. It boek is ek opnommen op de Honour List 2002 fan de IBBY. By útjouwerij Lemniscaat út Rotterdam is yn septimber 2001 ûnder de titel Wachten op Apollo in Nederlânske oersetting fan it boek ferskynd. Dizze oersetting is bekroand mei in "Vlag en wimpel" en in nominaasje foar de "Jonge jury" (sjoch Nijs maaie/juny 2002)). De earste druk wie yn in jier útferkocht.

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Mei Wolken fan wol lit Lida Dykstra sjen dat hja hieltyd better wurdt yn de taalbehearsking. It liket wol oft de wurden har út de fingers wei dûnsje.[...] Se wit de jûste toan te reitsjen troch it brede taalrepertoire fan it Frysk oan te sprekken.[...] Wolken fan wol wurdt presintearre as berneboek, mar de bondel is in oanrieder foar eltsenien.

Gerbrich van der Meer yn it Friesch Dagblad, 15 maart 2000.

Wolken fan wol is an adaptation of six myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the Metamorphoses Ovid makes use of the story-within-a-story technique - like a set of Chinese boxes. Lida Dykstra decided to apply the same technique to her book.

The first and outermost box became the story of Cornix, a young princess, changed by the goddess Minerva into a hooded crow. Cornix lands on the head of a poor shepherd boy, not far from the temple of Delphi. She's anxious to ask the Oracle how she can change back into a human being, but there's a long queue. To pass the time, Cornix begins to tell stories. The first of these is about Arachne, a young maiden who is very proud of her weaving.

And thus another box opens up inside the first one. In this second box, Arachne challenges Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, war and handicraft, to a contest. Each of them agrees to make a tapestry. Whoever weaves the most beautiful one will win.

The third Chinese box appears in the tapestries of Arachne and Minerva. Arachne's tapestry reveals the unhappy love story between Apollo and Daphne (who gets changed into a laurel tree) and the story of King Midas and his golden touch.
Minerva also weaves two myths. The first one tells the story of Phaëthon, the young boy who goes joyriding in his father's Chariot of the Sun and crashes it. The second one is the love story between Orpheus and Eurydice.

Lida 's goal was to weave the stories, just as Minerva and Arachne wove their tapestries.
The danger, however, was that the structure would become so complicated that the young reader would get lost. Once again, the solution to that problem was given to me by Ovid. He wrote, as did the other ancients, in metric verse, known as hexameters. Inspirated by that, Lida decided to give the different boxes in her book a different form.
And so, the outermost box, the story of Cornix, is written as prose. The inner boxes are written as modern epic poetry.

Wolken fan Wol ("Clouds of Wool") has been placed on the IBBY Honour List 2002 for the Frisian language group in the Netherlands. It has also been published in Dutch, under the title Wachten op Apollo, or "Waiting for Apollo"

Foreign publishers:

For further information and reading copies please contact Susanne Padberg.
Lemniscaat Rotterdam
P.O. Box 4066
3006 AB Rotterdam
The Netherlands
phone: ++ 31 10 206 2929
telfax: ++ 31 10 414 1560
e-mail: susanne@lemniscaat.nl