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‘We need the literature of other countries to expand our
horizons and stimulate our ideas. Without it, we are not only
diminished, we are starved’
(The Times, Magnus Linklater 29/06/05)

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Title: Pebble (The)

Author: Marius Marcinkevicius

Translator: Jura Avizienis

Illustrator: Inga Dagile

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Date Published: 2023

Format: Hardback

Genre:

Book Category: Picture Book

Age Range: 9-11

Original Title: First published in Lithuanian as Akmenelis, Tikra knyga, Lithuania, 2020

Country of Origin: Lithuania

Pebble (The)

by Marius Marcinkevicius
Age Range: 9-11

Eitan and Rivka are best friends. They live in a place where children play and laugh, dogs bark, and people chat. The only difference is that no one can leave beyond the locked gates and you never come back once you do. The narrator Eitan, a gifted violinist wishes he “could fly away, past the gates. To freedom” but Rivka says “Freedom’s not on the other side of the gates, but in here, in your heart.”

Set in 1943 in Vilnius, Lithuania when the Nazi regime forced Jews into ghettos, Lithuanian writer, poet and doctor Marius Maroinkeviĉius’s story, translated by Jūra Avižienis, conveys the horrors of the Holocaust in a sensitive and deeply moving way. The atrocities of the persecution of the Jews forced to live in ghettos during World War II are well-documented and finding new ways of telling this important history to children can be a challenge. Maroinkeviĉius has done this superbly by using the Jewish tradition of stones to remember the dead – the ‘pebble’ becoming an allegory for the Holocaust. Eitan narrates the story, with all the inevitable horrors that are visited on the ghetto and even beyond the grave as he becomes no more than a smooth pebble on a gravestone.

The clever typography with different-sized fonts and the use of bold lettering is very effective and award-winning artist Inga Dagile’s illustrations are haunting and evocative. The palette of blacks, browns and greys is contrasted sometimes with a bright yellow background and they emphasise- the ever-present fear and danger – the big black bird, an allegory for the Nazis, that “spread his wings and let out a loud caw. He looked just like the men in the black uniforms” – Eitan is clearly visible attempting to ward off the danger while silhouette figures and a frightening beak and eye of a bird are on a black background. Contrasted with this is the arrival of spring with colourful flowers and the pebble, a lasting symbol of endurance.

The Pebble is an incredibly powerful story, one about abiding friendship, strength and hope during one of the darkest times in history.

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