Kristina Sigunsdotter: Neele Nilsson’s secrets. – Culture

Kristina Siggunsdotter describes the attitude towards life of today’s girls, which sometimes needs 18 exclamation marks to express itself

Neele is desperate. Her best friend Nour wants nothing more to do with her. And that’s only because Neele was out of school for two weeks because of chickenpox. Nour is now only with the “Horse Girls”. Fanny, Neele’s favorite aunt, is no help either, because she is committed to a psychiatric institution with depression. To process her frustration, Neele writes and draws all events – even the most secret ones – in a diary. She tells of her “wolf lessons”, “when you wake up in the middle of the night and everything seems wrong and sad”. Also about her visits to Aunt Fanny in the psychiatric ward, and from Mütze, a boy in her class who is in love with her but she is not with him. Before, in between and after she writes about her longing for Nour. But then Neele goes on a class trip with her school and everything that was terrible before becomes good again.

The combination of first-person narration and the drawings that complete and comment on the writing will delight even children who don’t have the stamina for hundreds of page novels

Author Kristina Sigunsdotter and illustrator Ester Eriksson received the prestigious Swedish August Prize in the Children’s Book category for “Neele Nilsson’s Secrets” in 2020. In fact, together with their German translator Franziska Hüther, they manage to capture the attitude to life at the beginning of puberty on 108 pages, which often takes place in extremes: from “I hate school and I hate my life” to “A miracle has happened !”, followed by 18 exclamation marks. The combination of first-person narration and the drawings that complete and comment on the writing will delight even children who don’t have the stamina for hundreds of page novels. The lists written by Neele are also anchor points that immediately draw the reader who opens the book at random into the events and arouse curiosity. “Secrets I Only Told Nour” is one, for example, or “Mental Illnesses I Never Want To Have”. Also worth knowing: “Things that grandpa says you can die from”.

This book will appeal to kids who love “Greg’s Journal” or books like “100 Things You Should Have Done Before . . . “. But even experienced bookworms in early puberty will find themselves in Neele’s secrets. (from 10 years on)