Convincing new children’s book by Tjibbe Veldkamp | review ★★★★★

The boy needs a few seconds to get used to it being there, ‘just as eyes sometimes have to get used to the light when you pull open the curtains in one go’. It’s as if Adem is seeing everything for the first time, but he already knows what it is and what it’s called. He immediately loves the world. Of the snowflakes on the bridge and especially of the man and woman walking there, who accidentally fall into each other’s arms and quickly start kissing.

In the first stunning chapters of The boy who belongs to the world Tjibbe Veldkamp unceremoniously draws the reader into the story. Veldkamp is particularly successful with his original picture books (including the popular slapstick series Cop & Crook ) and always allows himself a little more in his books for older children. Bizarre and daring situations (a 13-year-old pregnant girl in Tiffany Dop) and confusing twists. This new book starts with both: 11-year-old Adem does not really exist, but floats like a ghost above the man and woman who could become his father and mother. He is their possible child, they just have to make him.

Breathed to life

Adem desperately wants to live and is given that opportunity as an advance, as long as the hourglass allows it. The boy accepts the proposal and is literally blown to life, his name is not nothing for Adem. That could have been a big deal, but it fits one to one with a boy who can also disappear in the blink of an eye.

The meeting with both his parents varies. His mother is a police detective and suspects a trap. Besides, she doesn’t need a child to be happy, she says. The father is a romantic, a political activist who tries to believe that Adem is his son, but does not understand. Mother doesn’t think it’s a good idea to meet father again, they are too different from each other for that. But that is beyond Breath.

The mysterious story, which seems to take place in an Eastern European country, gradually becomes an adventurous story in which Adem increasingly tries desperately to make it clear to his parents that they are his parents. And that there is little time. In the meantime, he learns all kinds of things about life: that it is not always fun and that you have to be careful: ‘Rule 1: take care of yourself’.

It is a book with life lessons and, above all, full of hope and love. Always that love that is what Veldkamp’s books are all about. The yearning for security and the desire to be seen. As long as Adem’s parents start to love each other, everything will be fine, in fact: then he can live. The great thing about this book again is that it is completely credible in all its absurdity; a magical-realistic thought experiment that convinces in every respect.