Text: Urszula Młodnicka-Kornaś
Illustrations: Agnieszka Waligóra
10+
112 pages
Hardcover
21×27,5 cm
(Albus)
Before you go through the secret gate behind which this world and the other world meet, we need to agree on a few things.
Do you know what tradition is? Someone would say it is about old, strange things that are there for no apparent reason. And I will tell you that tradition is sometimes simply about customs. It is also a way of thinking and imagining the world, how we understand it. It is passed on from generation to generation – but not through learning at school but through participation, action and stories. By involving children in different events – just as you probably take part in adorning the tree before Christmas and decorating Easter eggs. Or you bake a cake for your mum’s or dad’s birthday. Or tread different patterns in the first snow. Or eat breakfast in your pyjamas on Saturday morning. This is tradition.
Some of these traditional things or notions, which are very old, may seem bizarre and incomprehensible to us.
So what is the other world? The other world is the fifth side of the world. It is a part of reality that humans have always only intuited but cannot touch. According to some old stories, this is where souls live, where they come from and where they return to.
Between this World and the other World there are boundaries as thin as a spider’s thread.
It is a land and non-land following its own rules. Whatever is not possible in the real world, is possible in the other world. There, time flows differently or does not exist. In the other world, you can wander from star to star, climb a bridge woven of light….
But not everyone can get there either, much less leave it. The other world is close, very close but it is not accessible to everyone.
It opens up suddenly – or it stays closed and you need to know how to open it.
