Moralzarzal is a small commuter town just north of Madrid. According to the ayuntamiento figures, its usual eleven and a half thousand mid-week inhabitants swell to more than double that at weekends, most of whom seemed to put in an appearance at the feria de libros yesterday.
Topka had a stand, and since I was doing a storytelling session over at the library, I spent much of the day helping out.
The storytelling was exhausting – and caused the back ache of the title. Around thirty kids and a few mothers and an awful lot of white balloons instead of bubbles. But there were around eighty children signed up for Lucía’s reading of Playing for Papa and the origami session she had planned to acompany it. My editor is a brave woman.
There were six metres of table to be filled, and the Topka stable is still small, so we had other things going on, including games where the children could win small prizes. I’m not sure we sold very much, but the children seemed to find the table fun and it was all good experience.
It was also a delight to see all the books I’ve been involved with on display together. My name only appears on the front cover of Bubbles, but I’ve translated nine others of the Topka books.
Lucía is back in Moralzarzal this morning, playing ‘find the butterfly’, showing the kids where Japan is on the map of the world, helping them with the colours in English and making origami animal faces. She’s a brave woman. She also seems to have boundless energy to share.
don't confuse the narrator 