Scarecrow Stráša puts out trouble
Audiobook
Scarecrow Stráša puts out trouble
He's still a little scared, but he'll get over it...
Little Stráša, the son of the White Lady and the Headless Knight, was terribly afraid in his home castle. But since he's been going to school, his shyness hasn't been so disastrous. Although he does not yet fully understand all our sayings, he has found friends among the people who are the best cure for loneliness. Only he hasn't stopped being scared yet, especially when the obnoxious Krás siblings come around the corner. But what's worse: Sometimes he feels useless because he has no idea what field of horror he wants to pursue one day. His relatives therefore take him in hand and give him an apprenticeship with a hejkal, a waterman or a dwarf to find out what Stráša has a talent for. To run among the devils, where he'd be at ease? And what if there's one craft that's made for him? All you have to do is burn for it!
In the continuation of the funny stories of the timid little scarecrow, the most read Czech author of today sends the little ones a guide on how to work on courage.
Read: Nadya Konvalinková
She says: Markéta Jahodová
They wrote about the book:
Mornštajnová works with the established features of the genre of fairy tales, but she adapts the themes, characters and literary language to today's times. We thus meet typical [fairy tale] characters, but the author "humanizes" these heroes and lets them enter the real world, while (...) smuggling into the text elements of folklore and superstition. And it is the richness of the language that elevates the book above many others of the same genre.
- ctemeceskeautory.cz
The text introduces the children's reader to their own, often as yet unknown, language culture in a way that children and parents will enjoy. In reviews of Alena Mornštajnová's books, it is sometimes said that the talent to write legibly can be tricky in titles of beautiful literature (for adults). I don't think that's a threat with Stráša, thanks to the author's skills she is nice, clever and very fresh.
- iliteratura.cz
Alena Mornštajnová
She studied English and Czech at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava. She has worked as an English language teacher and translator, but currently lives in Valašské Meziříčí and devotes herself mostly to writing. Her debut novel was Blind Map (2013). Her second prose novel, Hotýlek (2015), and especially her next novel, Hana (2017), have received positive responses from both readers and critics. In 2018, the author became a double winner of the Czech Book Prize, when her novel Hana was declared the best Czech prose of the past year by a jury of both experts and students. At that time, she also published her first children's story, Stráša the Scarecrow (2018), in Albatross. For young readers, she wrote the books Kapka Aja, Teribear, and Stráša extinguishes trouble, in addition to its sequel (Stráša the Scarecrow): The Mystery of the Blue Box and Christmas in Sleeping Beauty Street. Her next novel, Silent Years (2019), was the absolute winner of the readers' poll Book of the Year - Reading Changes You. This was followed by the novels Listopád (2021), with which she won the Czech Book Award again, and then Les v domě (2023) and Čas vos (2025).
