If war, climate catastrophe and pandemic are among the realities that you cannot hide from children - especially those who are already on the threshold of puberty - then the question arises whether you should also expect this book from them.

Or whether meeting eleven-year-old Neele Nilsson might even be comforting, although or precisely because the first-person narrator who betrays her “secrets” in the book by Kristina Sigunsdotter (text) and Ester Eriksson (images) is surrounded by such boundless melancholy that their feelings and behavior suggest depression or borderline syndrome.

Ursula Scheer

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The mental health of children and adolescents is also endangered, as is the mental balance of adults: it is important to address both and break down taboos.

Its quality lies in the linguistic and visual intensity and raw honesty with which the two Swedes deal with the subject area in their volume: in 2020 it was awarded the August prize for the best children's and young adult book of the year in the author's and illustrator's home country excellent.

The book is certainly not light fare.

Neele is a sympathetic creature with the audacity of an Olchis, which would put any adapted children's book Connie to flight.

The girl is an artist who, with buckets of paint, transforms her parents' garden into an installation landscape and kneads plastic from soaked chewing gum.

Neither is funny, however, but rather an expression of a constant pain that hardly subsides over around a hundred pages: the installation is called “A Thousand Years of Black”, the chewing gum art is called “The last sigh of the pink turd”.

No one is mentally healthy here

Neele's heart was broken, it feels like a mashed potato, and that's why she squeezes a pine cone with her hand until she no longer feels the inner pain: Two weeks she had to stay at home sick with chickenpox, she has to go back to school they find out that their best friend Nour ("BFFs til hell freezes til the pug meows and god turns into a gecko") has turned her back on her and only hangs out with the clique of "horse girls" - half animal, half human Creatures in the black-and-white illustrations by Ester Eriksson, who, with her deliberately childlike, awkward, expressively inky drawings, brings Neele's world of images to paper.

The loss of the girlfriend is the end of the world for the loner,

No real support can be expected from the eternally sighing mother, who after many years of marriage is probably still clinging to a past love.

The other adults in Neele's environment also seem to have enough problems with themselves: the mineral-collecting teacher Steinlein, for example, or the librarian Marianne, who has "peed on the floor of the library" before, "unclear why".

That leaves Neeles' only remaining soul mate: Aunt Fanny in psychiatry.

Her depression may have almost extinguished the "spark of life" and the creativity of the adult artist, but only almost: Smoking "like an old dragon" she gives the girl the support she needs because she understands it, because both are the same .

So Neele's path through "Wolfsnächt" full of dark thoughts does not lead out into the sunshine, but at least into the moonlight - together with Fanny and Nour.

However, the fact that only reconciliation with her girlfriend can bring happiness back leaves a stale feeling: it makes Neele a victim.

On the other hand, the story certainly balances on the sharp line between childhood and youth, where playing with cuddly toys meets stolen tampons.

And where the formation of small groups, bullying and the loss of friends can trigger an inner misery that is almost incomprehensible when viewed from the outside.

"Neele Nilsson's Secrets", aired from the inside perspective, shows it.