Jokin Mitxelena was born in 1962 in San Sebastian.
After having obtained his degree in Fine Arts and having worked as an Art teacher, he moved in 1995 to Coblenza (Germany). Since then, he has been focused on illustration, also as an author, and he has made collaboration works with German and Spanish publishing houses, helping the storytellers with his illustrations and drawing with children, and not so young people.
What is it like to look at Euskadi from the Civil Guard headquarters? What is it like to be a civil Guard’s son? What are his relationships with his classmates like? How does he feel when they call him “Pikolo”?
Little Manuel arrives in Euskadi, coming from Extremadura. But Manuel is not coming in holiday, but he is coming to live at Larrañeta headquarters. His father is a Civil Guard.
Little Manuel tells us about his stay there: about loneliness in the headquarters, about the tree house on the fig, about his friendship with Elba and Kepa’s hate, about boars and about a terrible and painful…
“When it comes to children, you must answer what they are asking you about and, if you don’t want to tell them the truth, maybe because you don’t know what the truth is, then you tell them a story that looks as if it were real.” (Carmen Martín Gaite).
“Patxi Zubizarreta has the quality of turning, like if he were a wizard, any issue into poetry, even the hardest and most troubled matter… Since we are looking at the world from a child’s eyes, our world becomes a different world from the one of adults, that seem to be immovable in their beliefs.
Manuel talks to us from his solitude and from the surprise of finding habits that are so different to his, but he also talks to us from sweetness and the sense of discovery, from his innocence and mutual understanding, and shows us the darkest side, the least human side, the violent, close-minded side of human beings… this is a book that is worth reading…” (La Biblioteca de Alex, Blog of Salamanca City Libraries).