Notable Authors of Croatian Children's Literature is a project launched in 2020 by the Croatian Association of Researchers in Children's Literature in cooperation with the Croatian School Museum. The basic idea of the project was to repay authors who are meritorious for artistic achievements in the area of children's literature. These are the authors who marked our childhoods, who are co-creators of our shared cultural values, but whom we often forget when we grow up. With this project the emphasis is placed on the reception of the wider community and in the field of everyday life, so that the awareness of their importance does not remain trapped within the school walls. In this way, the aim is for people to become aware of children's literature as an important part of the broader cultural picture of national literature and history.
For this purpose, we decided to spatially and virtually map the City of Zagreb according to the addresses where authors important to Croatian children's literature were born, lived and created. Commemorative plaques are going to be placed on the facades of buildings, and texts about authors, their work and their connection to that particular space will be arranged around these topos in a virtual environment. Based on that, an attempt to reconstruct the spirit of life that they were leading on the particular locations will be made.
The project is designed so that the information reaches as wide a circle of users as possible, of different age groups (adults and children) and of different levels of prior knowledge (residents of Croatia as well as tourists). The texts about authors published on the website are the result of scientific research and are based on archival data, but they are written in a popular- scientific style in order to be attractive to those who meet authors of Croatian children's literature for the first time. Along with the texts, illustrations are also published, and when collecting them, we were guided by the idea of publishing lesser-known photographs. The texts also try to contribute to the general knowledge about authors and their position in Croatian children's literature, by including facts that are specific and less accessible, and which would reveal the personality of the author in his/her fullness, as a person that we can meet every day at the mentioned location. For the audience of a more playful nature, we have prepared an application that can be downloaded here. The application is intended for mobile phones and by downloading it you enter the world of play and imagination, and we take you on an unforgettable literary walk where you can meet our authors as well as characters from their most famous works.
