The Boy with Ball

Painter, illustrator, and writer Daisy Mrázková has a special talent for telling stories about ordinary things in extraordinary ways. She turns a yellow rubber ball with the brand name Trophy into “Trofina,” the playmate and friend of a boy named Pepík, and one of the main characters of the story. Besides the boy and the ball, this now-classic book features a little sister with a knack for inventing stories, friends, parents, and, of course, places – ordinary, yet lively and distinctive. Mrázková's heroes are regular children discovering the world through play, observation, and exploration, understanding happiness, gratitude, fear, pain, and love. Life’s lessons, she shows, can be learned just as well in a sandbox, a garden, just beyond the backyard, in the forest – and in books.