A captivating story about one peculiar souvenir, friendship, discovering family roots, and the courage to make things right.

Children’s and Young Adult

Out of curiosity, ten-year-old Matěj steals a bone from the open family vault at his great-uncle’s funeral and takes it home. What initially seemed like a great way of flabbergasting his classmates quickly turns into an insoluble problem, and Matěj now has one goal: to return his great-grandfather’s bone to where it belongs. But things do not go smoothly, leading to the start of an unexpected adventure. In the Easter holidays, Matěj doesn’t go skiing with his sister, but visits a distant branch of the family whom he barely knows. There he meets the brave and mysterious girl Róza and his peers in his dad’s cousin’s family. He learns about complex family relationships and comes to see his own family’s story from a perspective different to the one he has grown up with. This is a thrilling read up to the very last page; the ending is conciliatory, yet it also indicates that the path is long when your goals are big. The novel sensitively raises questions of death and deference, respect and friendship. Zdenka Holub Převrátilová’s pared-back illustrations are created from a series of coloured linocuts that strikingly reproduce the story’s atmosphere and inventively develop some plot motifs.

Age 10+