An

nejan

Mieras

Annejan Mieras

L E M N I S C A A T

Illustrated by Linde Faas

Hommeand the Emergency

SYNOPSIS

2

Homme’s mom has an unpleasant surprise: Pien, that strange and awkward girl in his class, is coming to stay. Pien’s mother needs to rest for a while, so Pien must temporarily stay somewhere else. Pien arrives the next day and is given Homme’s room. Homme will need to share his brother Tim’s room, and will have to take his iron animals out to the shed. He turns to his friend, bicycle mechanic Kees, for support. Kees supplies Homme with parts for his iron animals, and he advises him to first patiently take stock of the situation with Pien.

Mom and Dad do what they can to make Pien feel welcome and comfortable. But during their very first walk in the woods Pien falls in a muddy puddle and has to return home. Things don’t get any easier for Homme when it turns out that Pien doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle, has lice, is spoilt by the teacher, and is excused from eating green beans by Mom.

Homme confides in his school buddies Lieuwe and Stan, but soon feels betrayed by them. His brother Tim is not much of a help either.

Homme records all his grievances on an old voice recorder and plays the recordings to Kees. Among those the fact that they need to do dishes by hand because Pien broke the dishwasher– and that Pien claims she is a Polish princess and her father is a poet.

This time, Kees advises Homme to not pay Pien much attention for a while. That’s easier said than done, especially when mom asks him to teach Pien how to ride a bicycle. Secretly, Homme is quite proud when he manages to teach her; and it’s a relief to no longer need to walk to school any more. But during the very next walk in the woods, Pien falls from a tree and twists her ankle, which crosses out all the holiday plans. Instead, Homme now has to come along on a visit to Pien’s mother in the care centre!

But then Homme discovers that Pien stays awake at night, writing poetry. She tells him about the book by her missing father, Wisława Szymborska. It makes him think.

When Pien’s bicycle chain breaks and Homme takes her to Kees’s workplace, they discover that it is closed ‘due to circumstances’. After a few days they set off to investigate, and find Kees at home surrounded by flowers. It turns out that his mother recently passed away. Kees tells Pien that Wisława Szymborska is a female Polish poet – so not her father. Pien is upset and rips apart the poetry book. Homme discovers that Pien used lines from Szymborska’s poems in her own poems.

On the last day of the autumn holiday, they go for another walk in the woods with Dad. This time Pien does manage to climb to the top of the old maple tree. That’s when Homme suddenly sees a very different Pien. She tells him about how much she misses her father and about her mother’s gloomy moods. And she shares the last three lines that she used from a poem by Szymborska:

This moment reigns as far the eye can reach.

One of those earthly momentsInvited to linger.

On the first day of school after the holiday, Pien gives Homme the large shark’s tooth which she found previously. After his school friends have finished talking about their sub-tropical holidays, Homme proudly shows them the shark’s tooth. ‘Pien found it. She has very sharp eyes.’

The story ends with Pien’s last poem:

Shark tooth and sharp eyesThat

,s what I am about

Don,t pass me by now

The biographies and poems by Wisława Szymborska and Pien van Putten are included in the book as an epilogue.

Original title: Homme en het noodgeval | Binding: Hardback | Trim size: 14,3 x 21.5 cm | Extent: 196 pages | Age: 9+

A light-hearted tale full of iron animals and poetry, about fundamental themes such as being a foster child, loss, powerlessness and an emerging friendship.

SYNOPSIS

L E M N I S C A A T P U B L I S H E R S

P . O . B O X 4 0 6 6

N L – 3 0 0 6 A B R O T T E R D A M

P H O N E + 3 1 ( 0 ) 1 0 2 0 6 2 9 2 4

F O R E I G N R I G H T S @ L E M N I S C A A T . N L

W W W . L E M N I S C A A T . N L

An

nejan

Mieras

Annejan Mieras

L E M N I S C A A T

Illustrated by Linde Faas

Hommeand the Emergency

SYNOPSIS