The Boy Who Loved the World
If Breath doesn’t come up with a way to bring his mother and father together soon, he’ll never be born
It sounds like the most impossible mission ever: Breath, a spirit who resembles an eleven or twelve-year-old boy, has to ensure that his future mother and father fall in love. Otherwise he will never exist for real.
This is the story: his future mother, Zdenka, and his future father, Vaclav, both slip and fall at the same moment as they’re crossing a snowy bridge over the River Naber in the town of Paznau in what appears to be somewhere in eastern Europe. They land in each other’s arms. From that moment, Breath exists – but only as a possibility.
Zdenka is a police officer and Vaclav is a homeless man who writes inflammatory words about the city council on walls at night. It’s highly unlikely that they’d ever get together in the normal course of events. For now, Breath is no more than a possible boy.
The spirit Barkov, who watches over all the potential children in Paznau, takes Breath under his wing and goes against his own principles to give him a brief chance at real life so that he can nudge his parents in the right direction. Once Breath returns to Paznau, he finds his mother soon enough. However, she doesn’t believe a word of his story. She likes the boy, but she thinks he’s after her money. His itinerant father proves much more difficult to track down. Deeply disappointed, Breath goes to live with his new friend, Felix, at the local orphanage, still hoping that a miracle will occur.
his sounds like a ready-made script for Christmas fun for all the family, and perhaps it is. It’s a book that’s begging to be made into a movie. This is certainly not a criticism. Although it’s very romantic, this feel-good story is written in such a gritty, wise and humorous way that it never becomes overly sweet – far from it.
Age: 10+
“One of his best books”
“'The Boy Who Loved The World' is a Pinocchio-like winter’s tale with a breathtaking twist.”
