With 3 Balls of Wool (How the World Twists and Turns)

Yara Kono & Henriqueta Cristina

A family moves to another country in search of a freer place where all children can go to school. But despite being different, the new country is far from perfect and in this grey new world, a lack of freedom is felt in the simplest of things such as choosing the colour of the jumper you want to wear in the morning…

And there’s where one mother sets to work. Or to be more precise, one mother, a pair of needles and three ball of wool…

With the same old colours – the same colours since forever – this mother gets knitting and starts a small revolution in the city!

Based on real events, this story is inspired by the experience of a Portuguese family who fled the Estado Novo dictatorship in the late 1960s and lived in exile in several countries.

“Once again, the publisher Planeta Tangerina takes a difficult subject and tells it to a young audience in a creative way. In fact, as creative as the strategy that the mother in this story finds to put an end to the monotony of the uniforms worn by her children, who were always dressed in grey, green or orange sweaters — the tones that Yara Kono uses to make illustrations more colourful than a rainbow.” – Ana Dias Ferreira, Observador, 2015

“A biographical narrative, as well as an allegory for freedom.” – Andreia Brites, Blimunda magazine, 2015

“Click, clack go the knitting-needles – the spirit of the April revolution is unquestionably rooted in the pages of this book.” – Pedro Miguel Silva, Deus me Livro, 2015

Books by Yara Kono