Meno male che il tempo era bello
| Original title | Encore heureux qu’il ait fait beau |
| Original language | French |
| Place of first publication | Francia |
| ISBN original edition | 978-2-36474-080-8 |
| Original Publisher | Thierry Magnier |
| Contacts | |
Formats
Printed book
Audio-eBook EPUB 3 (digital format, text and audio in sync)
Audiobook MP3 (digital format, audio only)
eBook EPUB 3 (digital format, text only)
MobiKindle (digital format, text only)
No one knows how or why, but one day, during a violent storm, the library Jacques Prévert, a large cubic block of gray concrete, casts off with it its director, the librarian, the students of a high-school 1st-year class and their technology teacher, a housemaid and Saïd, a solitary teenager who was there by chance. After having accepted that something incredible happened and a first panic reaction, adults and children have to take the bar and turn into sailors: they must get food, find fresh water, organise life aboard. In this situation, everybody’s contribution is equally important. But the library itself will offer a valuable help: books help spending time during long sailing hours, offer solutions to practical problems, soothe homesickness and children can compare their experience to Robinson’s adventures or to “The Thousand and One Nights”. The journey lasts 28 days, with discoveries, adventures, disputes and joy. At the end, both children and adults have grown up and changed, as their made an introspective journey too.
The novel is a tribute to culture and books, but this story of people who find a way of living and interacting together in spite of their many differences also gives prominence to the same values that are at the basis of European Community, such as mediation, cooperation, solidarity, integration, acceptance.
Florence Thinard
(Author)
Florence Thinard was born in Royan in 1962. From 1995 to 1998 she is editor of the magazine Les clés de l’actualité Junior, then she became a freelance journalist. She publishes a geopolitical work, Mondes Rebelles Junior, which decrypts about thirty conflicts to teenagers and Les 1,000 mots de l’info, a dictionary of current words. Her first novel was published in 2003. “Encore heureux qu’il ait fait beau” is published in Korea and is going to be a film for French television.
Veronica Truttero
(Illustrator)
After her degree at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, Veronica Truttero has studied at the International School of Illustration of Sarmede, at the Ars in fabula School of Macerata, and got a master at the Drosselmeier Academy. Since 2016, she has been living in Ravenna, where she works as illustrator and bookseller in the children’s bookstore named Momo, inaugurated with two colleagues. For Camelozampa, she illustrated Jef Aerts’ La notte di Ronke Polly Horvath’s, La casa di Pine Island, winner of the Orbil prize, Polly Horvath’s Tutto sopra un waffle, Florence Thinard’s Meno male che il tempo era bello, finalist for the Strega Award, as well as Alice Keller’s Caro signor F. and Di notte.
Sara Saorin
(Translator)
Sara Saorin graduated from the School of Interpreters and Translators in Bologna. She is co-founder of Camelozampa, for which she has translated titles by authors such as Marie-Aude Murail, Quentin Blake, Anthony Browne, Chen Jiang Hong, Christophe Léon, Florence Thinard, Gaia Guasti and others. His translations of Quentin Blake’s Zagazoo and Crockett Johnson’s Ellen and the Lion won the Andersen Prize in 2017 and 2022 respectively. He has also translated Unico nel suo genere by Neil Packer.