A visually striking and linguistically innovative steam-punk story for children about entropy and the ageing of things.
Children’s and Young Adult
Typo and Skim are “imps-entropists” whose task is to make everything grow old in chaos under the reign of the Ravages of Time. Typo the imp attends the Things Ageing Primary School, where he learns how to wear down things to decay thoroughly. He especially focuses on making grammatical errors in books. However, when on a trip to the world of humans, he finds out that they do not like things ageing. Therefore, he and his friend Skim decide to stop the Ravages of Time… This large-format book with a beautiful graphic design and art style is full of sketches of instruments which are the basis of entropy.
The book was artistically prepared by an illustrator whose work includes the visual style of the popular Czech TV channel for children, ČT:D. Thanks to him, children can see a real desert, library, sweet shop or dump site. Everywhere they can enjoy various puns, plays on words and parodies prepared for them by the authors, but at the same time they can observe the Big Ravages of Time taking its toll and find out that stopping it is not advisable.
Download an excerpt in English here and German here.
Praise
“The title with the jokey names of the protagonists and the cover illustration depicting elves destroying a book might give the impression that this is one of many nonsense children’s tales whose main ambition is to entertain the child reader by juxtaposing crazy and realistic life situations. However, Typo and Crust offers much more. Beneath the surface of the humorous action, it touches upon important existential questions.”
—Milena Šubrtová, iLiteratura
“Beautiful illustrations, an engaging story, an original idea and wonderful humour for children and parents alike. This book turns reading bedtime stories into fun for parents too.”
Information about the original Czech edition
Other selected published translations (1)
Typo et Graillon French