Silvana De Mari

Silvana De Mari - Lucca Comics & Games 2016

Silvana De Mari (* 1953 in Caserta ) is an Italian writer .

biography

She studied medicine and worked first as a doctor in Italy, later as a volunteer in Ethiopia . Today she works in psychotherapy . Silvana De Mari had already published shorter texts in magazines when she made her literary breakthrough in 2004 with the children's book L'ultimo elfo . The book, which is intended for children from the age of eleven, has now been translated into 18 languages ​​like the three subsequent volumes.

She lives with her family near Turin .

plant

Italian

• L'ultima stella a destra della luna . Salani 2000.
• La bestia e la bella . Salani 2003.
• L'ultimo elfo , Salani 2004.
• L'ultimo orco , Salani 2005.
• Il drago come realtà . Salani 2007
• Gli ultimi incantesimi . Salani 2008.
• Il cavaliere, la strega, la morte e il diavolo . Lindau 2009.
• Il gatto dagli occhi d'oro . Fanucci 2009
• L'Ultima Profezia del Mondo degli Uomini . Fanucci 2010.

In German translation

• The last elf . Translated from the Italian by Barbara Kleiner. cbj , Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-13478-8
• The last orc . Translated from the Italian by Barbara Kleiner. cbj, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-570-13521-1
• The last spell . Translated from the Italian by Barbara Kleiner. cbj, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-570-13850-2
• The return of the elves . Translated from the Italian by Barbara Kleiner. cbj, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-570-13945-5

Awards and nominations

• 2004: Premio Andersen and Premio Bancarellino for L'ultimo elfo
• 2006: Best Children's Books of 2006 for Il drago come realtà or the English version The Last Dragon
• 2006: Mildred L. Batchelder Award
• 2010: Main Student Book Award (nominated)
• 2011: Nutmeg Children's Book Award (nominated) 2011

review

Contrary to the mostly positive reviews from abroad regarding The Last Elf , older German-speaking reviewers had problems with the narrative style and the story of De Maris: “The plot is so simple, without climaxes and not very original that children from three years of age already have this good night -History can be satisfied. On the other hand, the author (or maybe also the translation ?!) uses such difficult words that kids should understand little here. (...) The narrative style chosen here is also not very convincing. In the first story, the characters are named 'Woman', 'Hunter' and 'The Little Elf', which makes it almost impossible to sympathize with the characters. How should small children and / or young people, depending on who is supposed to read them, make friends with characters who have no names? This fantasy tale asks quite a few questions - only the answers remain. As a reader you are already very perplexed when you have to ask yourself what this book has become. Somehow an empty shell without life and passion. 'The Last Elf': Apart from the wonderful cover and the great title, this book has not become a recommendable representative of its genre. Rather an indefinable piece of fairy tale that is difficult to assign. It's a shame, you could and should have gotten a lot more out of here! "

Some reviewers were less than happy with the forced action of The Last Orc : “This book is incredibly cruel. It makes you cold and your soul freezes. While in the first volume you already experienced how selfish and cold-hearted people are, the story of the second volume beats that by far. Some scenes shock, make the reader cry, suffer and curse the actors. Everything that has become dear to you will be destroyed. (...) All in all, this is an exciting continuation of the first volume, "The Last Elf", which is above all cruel, sad and very moving. This sequel is not suitable for the faint of heart ”.

In the third part of the series, however, the critics recognized a change: “Silvana de Mari maintains her fairytale style, but is also not too bad to describe atrocities and deal with an execution. She has long since renounced portraying the world in a naive and lovable way, instead comes up with sober realism, because she names many things by their names. However, she manages not to scare younger readers because, on the one hand, she never lets her heroes lose hope and, on the other hand, knows exactly the limits for the accuracy of the descriptions ”.

The successful balancing act between the unexplained description of life realities and indulging in idyllic fantasy worlds is particularly mentioned by reviewers. "Silvan de Mari accompanies the tragic side of her story [...] without falling too much into clichés. [An ...] intense reading experience full of emotion, humor and a little sadness."

Web links

Commons : Silvana De Mari  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Silvana De Mari in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of the author (Italian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Portrait of the author at the Random House publishing group
2. ↑ Review of Il drago come realtà (Italian)
3. ↑ Kramer, Jerome. "Best children's books of 2006." Kirkus Reviews 1 Dec. 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Nov 2010.
4. ↑ ^{a b} R.R. Bowker LLC., (2010). Bowker's Global Books In Print. The British Library and Bibliographic Data Services. Web. Nov 9, 2010.
5. ↑ Review of The Last Elf by Thomas Ays on booksection.de
6. ↑ Discussion about The Last Ork on roterdorn.de ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Review of The Last Magic by Christel Scheja on phantastiknews.de
8. ↑ Review of The Last Elf by Stefanie Eckmann-Schmechta on the children's book couch , loaded on November 28, 2013