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  LOS NIÑOS TONTOS (FOOLISH CHILDREN) Text by Ana María Matute Illustrations by Javier Olivares ISBN: 84-930221-7-9 112 pp. PVP: 18'03 euros "This is not a book for children," it is a book about children. Ana María Matute wrote it in 1956; if we include it here it is because we naively think that anything concerning children should be within their reach (if they don't understand this, they will). Los niños tontos is a book about childhood, which is the most important part of anyone's life, the richest in terms of experience, discovery and sensations. Without a doubt, we have grown up to become who we are because we had a difficult or an easy childhood, surrounded by beasts or teddy bears. Javier Olivares , the illustrator, has portrayed the lights and shadows of these stories so that we grownups may remember that it has not been long since we had a different life, and so that smaller persons may know that the things that they are thinking or that are happening to them have already been thought or lived through by others before them: for better or for worse, but just as intensely. THE HUNTER'S BOY The hunter's boy would go into the woods every day, following his father, with his haversack and the bread. They would come back at night with pigeons and hares hanging from their belts, their legs spattered with little red drops, which would slowly turn black. The hunter's boy would wait in a small hut made of branches, he would hear the shots and count them quietly. At night, tripping on stones, he could feel the pigeons' beaks, those of the quail and partridges, the beaks of thrushes, drumming against his knees. The hunter's boy would dream until dawn of hunting with shotguns and dogs. One night, with a full moon in the sky, the hunter's boy took the shotgun and went out in search of the trees up the road. The boy caught the stars of the night, the white larks, the blue hares, the green pigeons, the golden leaves and the pointed wind. He caught fear, cold, in the dark. When he was brought down, at dawn, his mother saw the morning dew had turned red as wine, spattering the knees of the foolish boy hunter. (Ana María Matute)
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