“Books are basic textbooks for learning imagination,” said Tomasz Trojanowski during a meeting held on 7 May at Galeria Format, Tomasz Trojanowski, the author of several works for children and winner of the Kornel Makuszyński Award. The writer noted that he treats creating for children as a kind of mission. Literature should develop the imagination, which, as the author of “Julka and the Cats” stressed, is “one of the most important mechanisms that allow people to remain human.”
In the artist’s view, the world shown on television is artificial and one-dimensional, and kills the imagination—and thus humanity. “It seems to me that nothing can be changed anymore in adults’ lives,” Tomasz Trojanowski told the IstotneInformacje.pl portal. “But children can still be shown that worlds other than those visible on television exist,” he added.
Books fascinated him when he was four. Two titles made a particularly strong impression on him: Kornel Makuszyński’s “The Adventures and Pranks of Little Monkey Fiki Miki” and Alfred Szklarski’s “Tomek in the Black Land.” Since childhood, the author of “Cat Stories” has also enjoyed radio dramas (he now creates them himself; his radio play “To the Rescue” represented Poland at an international competition in Bratislava).
Tomasz Trojanowski admitted that he loves texts referring to magical realism: works containing elements of magic and the extraordinary, but written in such a way that the reader feels the story in the book could happen “within arm’s reach.” The author of “The Fugitives” most enjoys reading this type of work, and tries to write in the same way himself.
Life is often an inspiration for the writer. The cats from his texts really exist (the writer showed those gathered at Galeria Format photographs of his pets). “Everything depends on imagination, on how one looks at reality,” stressed Tomasz Trojanowski.
So far, the author of “Włochacz and the Alien Civilization” has written seven books for children, including three about cats. But, as he noted, “books are not written by the kilogram or by the piece.” Asked which of his own works he considers the best, the writer replied: “I devoted the same amount of emotion and work to all my books.”
(GA report)