"Rosalinda Moves" is a feature book that continues its predecessors in describing the life of the witch Rosalinda, when in the current book, the third in the series, she moves to live in an apartment building, is jealous of all the families around her and tries to get the experience of belonging to a family.
In fact, the motif of loneliness and the search for human connection runs through all three Seder books: in the first book, Rosalinda is jealous of people who receive letters, builds a friendship with the neighborhood postman and corresponds with him;
in the second she places an ad in the newspaper to look for a friend and dares to travel to meet a new witch who lives far away in the mountains;
And in the current book, when the friends she managed to acquire are far away, she begins to miss her family.
Rosalinda, in my eyes, is a relative of two other Israeli witches: Nurit Zarhi's classic Tanina, and Ronit Had's witch from Niyhara (who started her literary life in the "Eyes" issues).
Like them, her magic skills are indeed present and exist in her world, but they only decorate her life from time to time and are not at the center of it.
Like them, the witch Rosalinda is in a unique position on the seam between an adult and a girl - all three live alone (if you don't count pets) and are responsible for their lives and keeping a diary like adults, but have difficulty understanding fundamental matters about the ways of the world - just like children.
Because of this, despite her older appearance, Rosalinda does not imagine becoming a mother, but the opposite - she envies the many and varied families that live in the apartments around her and especially a specific family of a mother and child that she sees from the window, but her envy is not maternal envy but childish envy, of those who want to sit with them on the couch and listen to stories.
Netali Ron-Rez illustrates Rosalinda as an almost ordinary woman with a strange hairstyle and a slightly melancholy smile, using soft lines and strong colors.
Like the text, the illustrations are very realistic, but also include a subtle twist of magic and sorcery.
Rosalinda (unlike her friend Selina from the previous book) doesn't look like a magical stereotype, but like a "normal" woman.
But this ordinary woman has a red cat and a green dragon, she has a broom (on which she flies in the previous book), and among her usual household items you can also find spell books.
And yet, the charm remains in the role of a spice within her realistic life.
An illustration by Netali Ron-Raz from the book,
Iris Argaman often writes children's books that take place in an urban reality and in which the city and the street are secondary heroes.
Here, too, there is a significant presence of the urban street, and especially of the high-rises in Israeli reality that the illustrator chose to decorate with solar heaters and antennas.
The city and the high-rises begin as a hostile and difficult place for Rosalinda, and her childlike personality allows Argman to describe her first encounter with an elevator while creating a stranger, which allows the children to be in the role of adults and understand: "At the entrance to the building there was a silver-colored door that opened like a closet, and beside it was a flashing yellow button. She She pressed the button and the door opened... it was scary."
In a gray reality of signs on the doors, and doors next to which there are vegetable boxes or garbage bags ready to be thrown away, there is also a subtle and fiery fragrance of magic from time to time, as in this beautiful description: "...suddenly a twinkling star fell and landed right on her palm. She put it Carefully in a jar with water, but the star disappeared after a few minutes."
Each of the three books in the series can stand on its own and tell a complete story, but children who get to know Rosalinda throughout the series can see how her search for intimacy and human connection deepens and takes different forms.
There is something emotionally accurate in that even in the third book, Rosalinda still struggles to build a human connection, yet musters courage and dares.
This motif is unusual because children's works sometimes have a tendency to oversimplify and present absolute problems that have absolute solutions.
In real life the situation is much more complex and if someone is shy and introverted, even if she manages to get over it and make contact with a friend or two, she usually remains shy and introverted later on as well.
This is how Rosalinda's closed and hidden nature leaves her closed and having trouble contacting Michal and I - the mother and the child from the house across the street - because that is simply who she is.
Precisely from this difficulty, the success is more exciting and powerful and may serve as a strengthening model for the children who will be exposed to the book, and especially for the shy and apprehensive among them.
Rosalinda is afraid, looking from the side at the multitude of families (this is the place to emphasize that as a single mother I was moved by the casual way in which a mother and child family is presented in the book), and the neighbors across the street are the ones who take the initiative, send her a drawing, approach her on the street and finally allow her to join their domestic intimacy.
And precisely despite - and perhaps because of - this tolerable role that Rosalinda plays in the process of establishing contact, I was particularly moved to see that in the doublet that closes the book, the power relations are reversed and Mom and I are drawn sitting on a branch next to Rosalinda on the tree that, despite the move to an apartment building, remains Rosalinda's real home space.
There is no ladder, crane or words to explain how they got there or how they will be able to get down, but there is no need for that either.
This is the power of witches, this is the power of stories.
Iris Argaman / Rosalinda is moving house, Ira: Netali Ron-Rez, meter
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