You only need to pull one thread, and the entirety of world artistic culture will begin its persistent infiltration of your life.
Fyodor dreams of becoming a comic book artist, and right now he’s on vacation with plenty of free time on his hands. By chance, he stumbles into a theater studio for kids his age who are rehearsing "Romeo and Juliet." While these teenagers are passionate about theater, in every other way they are perfectly ordinary kids: they express themselves, wander the streets, zone out, and have no idea what they want. But their idleness is an illusion—these young minds are processing tons of information. They are deeply moved by Van Gogh’s irises and Bruegel’s paintings, and they are struck by the performances of contemporary artists and the death of Chekhov. They are still concerned about where the ducks from New York’s Central Park go and what summer tennis shoes are actually made of. And it’s their idea that Juliet doesn't have to die on stage in every production for hundreds of years—let her live and take control of her own destiny...
This book has the power to significantly broaden the horizons of a teenager's worldview because it mentions so many works of art and their creators that if you start searching for which painting or film they are talking about, you will lose yourself in art, and a close encounter with art has never left anyone unchanged.
Jack London, Jackson Pollock, "The Cranes Are Flying," the Globe Theatre, Bas Jan Ader, Ilya Kabakov, Hemingway, and many other interesting things will enter your life through this short novella, which clearly cannot be contained within its own cover.
"Once Upon a Summer We Saved Juliet" by Anastasiya Maleyko for ages 12–16.
Leave a comment