Blažetin’s anthology A Brilliant Game provides a comprehensive overview of Croatian children’s poetry in Hungary from 1945 to the present day. It includes children’s poems penned by Marija Vargaj, Mate Šinković, Marga Šarac, Marko Dekić, Ljudevit Škrapić, Stipan Blažetin, Jolanka Tišler and Đuso Šimara Pužarov.
A gala presentation at the CHF of an anthology of Croatian children’s poetry in Hungary from 1945 to 2012 was hosted by the Croatian Heritage Foundation and the Zagreb Municipal Libraries’ Centre for Children’s Books on October 18. The presentation was staged in the frame of Croatian Book Month. The book was presented after introductory words from CHF director Marin Knezović by Diana Zalar DSc of the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Teacher Education, the editor Stjepan Blažetin MSc, the director of the Hungarian Croatian Institute of Sciences in Pécs and the director of the Zagreb Municipal Libraries‘ Croatian Centre for Children’s Books Ranka Javor. The presentation was moderated by Vesna Kukavica, head of the CHF publishing department.
The editor of this anthology of Croatian children’s poetry in Hungary, entitled Sjajna igra (A Brilliant Game) (Hungarian Croatian Institute of Sciences, Pécs, 2010) is writer and translator Stjepan Blažetin, a university professor from the department of Croatian language studies at the Faculty of the Humanities in Pécs and the current director of the Hungarian Croatian Institute of Sciences. With this valuable work Blažetin brings us the work of eight authors, most from the teaching profession. A Brilliant Game provides a comprehensive overview of Croatian children’s poetry in Hungary from 1945 to the present day. It includes children’s poems penned by Marija Vargaj, Mate Šinković, Marga Šarac, Marko Dekić, Ljudevit Škrapić, Stipan Blažetin, Jolanka Tišler and Đuso Šimara Pužarov.
On the pages of this anthology we can follow the course of children’s poetry from the first verses published in newspapers and calendars, through the 1980s—when it achieved affirmation as a separate branch of this literature—to the present day when it has approached contemporary trends. The anthology has been released with the support of the Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture.
As a memento of this gathering and the promotion of this brilliant book Stjepan Blažetin presented CHF director Marin Knezović and the director of the Zagreb Municipal Libraries’ Centre for Children’s Books Ranka Javor with valuable publications.
Text by: Željka Lešić; Photos by: Snježana Radoš
