It is a stormy morning in November when her mother takes Emma to a big, chunky house. Above the entrance it says “School“ and inside the grey giants that sometimes assign really tricky puzzles keep watch. “You, hammer nose, this calculation is very easy. No witchcraft. So do try a bit harder!“ So Emma is suddenly facing this word. So big and awful like the dark grey, old giant. Hammer nose? Emma‘s new nick name makes her wonder: Has there always been a hammer, there, where her nose is meant to be? She feels very very sad all of a sudden. But Emma isn‘t so easily dismayed, because Emma is a Bengal tiger, as Dad always says. And the tiger suddenly has a plan … 
Raffaela Schöbitz tells the story of little Emma in muted colours and with fine, detailed strokes of her pen. It‘s a story about self-awareness, the perception of others and how you can love yourself despite it all. No matter what the others say.
“The stone old giants say that children ought to be able to swim through their language like jaunty little fish in the sea.“
by Raffaela Schöbitz
- IBBY Honour List 2022
- Selected for the Collection of the Austrian Children‘s Literature Award 2021
Luftschacht Verlag | hc | 36 pp | 210 x 256 mm | 5+
All rights available
[original title: Die grauen Riesen]