Far-flung adventures in Dalcratia

Children books are sometimes an interesting depositary of mentalities, not evident at the first and second, and even third sight. During the Cold War, mostly the 60s and 70s, a lot of cartoons and movies had scattered remarks about the good and the bad and the nuclear danger. Especially in the United States, the books are instrumental in educational strategies aimed to create the background of an open and tolerant attitude. The European Union started a couple of years ago a series of cartoons dedicated to a better explanation of the institution, through simple plots and dialogues between children of different countries, skin color and ethnicity. The approach is chose by national institutions, in the communications efforts for creating the sense of belonging and citizenship. We'll just mention the children page of the German Foreign Service offering to the young Germans a colorful and age-targeted travel across the main subjects of the complicate foreign affairs area and of the most important international institutions.

Children books, written by adults, with their individual cultural and intellectual profiles, could be sometimes full of geographical and cultural references, not obvious for kids but which, in an adult lecture. Identified as such, they are points of a mental map of how we see and insert in the global narrative scattered and unfamiliar - because not a constant presence in our daily public reality.

Just a couple of such hints, as found in the 2005 "Far Flung Adventures: Corby Flood", by Paul Stewart and illustrate by Chris Riddell:

- The brave girl Corby Flood is traveling with her parents on the boat Euphoria, across the Dalcratian (just replace "cr" with "m") coast "one of the most isolated and mountainous", with many "natural ports and charming towns".

- The towns across the coast are bearing names with a Greek resonance: Mesapoli (meso-half, polis - town), Doralakia "where you have the Day of the Longest Afternoon".

- The mayor from Doralakia is called Konstantin Pavel - a name which could be found, in various spellings, in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia.

- In the illustrations, the inhabitants of Doralakia are portrayed wearing something very similar with the Greek national costumes.

The references stop short to this descriptive, ennumerative aspects. The inspiration is having thousand of sources and, in this case, the names are just intending to create the atmosphere of the "far flung" adventures.