Šta deca pitaju o Tesli i „Čarobnom jedrenjaku“?
Kako objasniti Nikolu Teslu detetu, a da ga ne pretvorimo u suvoparnu lekciju? O pitanjima koja deca postavljaju i o onom najdražem: „Da li bih i ja mogao nešto da izmislim?“
How do you explain Nikola Tesla to a child without turning him into a dry lesson?
When I was writing Magical Sails, I did not want to hand children yet another biography of Nikola Tesla. I wanted to open the door onto his world and let them ask the questions themselves.
Children ask the best questions.
Did Tesla know as a child that he would become a genius? Was he afraid? Why did he love pigeons? Did he really make lightning? How could he picture an invention before he built it?
And my favourite:
“Could I invent something too?”
Perhaps that is exactly why children are so drawn to Tesla. His life already has all the ingredients of a great adventure: an unusual boy, lightning, experiments, journeys, big ideas, triumphs — and also moments of being misunderstood and alone.
In Magical Sails history is not a lesson but a space a child is allowed to step into. Through the adventures of Luka, Lana and the fairy Anđelina, real events meet literary imagination, and Tesla stops being just a stern face in an old photograph: he becomes a man the child wants to know more about.
And then another important question tends to appear:
“But did this really happen?”
I love that question. It means the story has awakened curiosity.
Tesla is real. The historical places and many of the events in the book are real. Magical Sails is a literary adventure that builds its magical world in between those facts, and for me that is where the most important thing begins.
I do not want a child to close the book and say only: “Now I know more about Tesla.”
I would like them to say:
“I want to find out more.”
And most of all:
“I have an idea.”
Because perhaps Tesla’s greatest legacy is not only in what he invented. Perhaps it is also in the fact that his story can still prompt a child to look at the world around them and ask:
“What if it could be done differently?”
That is why Magical Sails “flew” across the ocean and arrived exactly where I wanted it to: at children’s curiosity.
Maja C. S.
Maya Story — the voice of childhood | Family literature
