Technical specs
Original title: Supergigante
160 pages / 165 x 230 mm
ISBN: 9789898145598 / RRP: 14€
1st edition: May 2014
2nd reprint: July 2017
© Rights sold: Brazilian Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish (Mexico, Guatemala, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Argentina)
Supergiant
(Portuguese edition)
Edgar runs at full speed, leaving everything behind: his family, his school, his friends. Today is the saddest day of his life because his grandfather disappeared, but it is also the happiest one because Joana kissed him for the first time.
Along the way, Edgar stumbles over his reflections, family lunches, his friends’ laughter and long conversations with Joana. As he moves forwards, Edgar grows ever bigger.
At one point he no longer fits inside his own body.
He becomes a monster. A continuous explosion.
A supergiant.
This book is part of the 2 Steps and a Leap collection.
Technical specs
Original title: Supergigante
160 pages / 165 x 230 mm
ISBN: 9789898145598 / RRP: 14€
1st edition: May 2014
2nd reprint: July 2017
© Rights sold: Brazilian Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish (Mexico, Guatemala, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Argentina)
Awards and recognitions
Nominated — Best Children’s and Young Adult Book, Author’s Awards by SPA – Portuguese Society of Authors (2015)
Recommended — Portuguese National Reading Plan
Selected — White Ravens Catalogue, International Youth Library (2015)
Highly recommended — FNLIJ, “Portuguese Language Literature” category (Brazil, 2016)
Finalist — Fundación Cuatrogatos Award (Mexico, 2018)
Selected — Troquel’s indispensable books list (Centro de estudos da Fundação La Fuente, Chile)
Selected — IBBY guide of recommended books for children and teens (Mexico, 2018)
What they say
Ana Pessoa’s second novel is worthy of all the same praise (as the first). In Supergiant, a narrative where loss and a first discovery of love run alongside and in and out of one another, and where rhythm, carefully wrought language and a boldness in the handling of delicate subjects are all confirmed. Bernardo Carvalho lights up select passages with perfectly apt illustrations.
Sara Figueiredo Costa, Atual magazine, Expresso newspaper, 12/07/2014
Supergiant has a magnificent temporal subtext. Ana plays with the notions of present, past and future alongside the process of identity construction undergone by the protagonist, who likes to tell a story by starting at its end. The boy stumbles along between life in the past, understanding the present and choosing a future according to the angle from which he sees and positions himself in the world.
Roberto Almeida, Garatujas Fantásticas site, 14/07/2014
5 stars by Expresso newspaper:
(…) what’s certain is that in the end, or else at the beginning — the order is irrelevant — everything finds its place and position and makes sense, that is this book’s greatest feat, as it makes the chaos of adolescence not only palpable but understandable, beautiful in its fragility. It is the incredibly delicate and intelligent prose of Ana Pessoa, with its absolutely realistic dialogues, which manages to do this. But it is also the illustrations by Bernardo Carvalho – stains of colour and silhouettes which capture just the right atmospheres (…)
José Mário Silva, Atual magazine, Expresso newspaper, 26/07/2014
The torrential discourse of this (supposedly) YA book, which zig-zags between the past and the present, is that of Edgar — a boy who is coping with the death of his grandfather and also the impact of his first kiss — cataclysms which coincided on the very same day.
Sílvia Souto Cunha, Visão magazine, 30/7/2014
5 stars by Timeout magazine:
Told in a torrent — the anxious stream-of-consciousness of an angry teen which is also portrayed in the similarly restless illustrations by Bernardo Carvalho — Supergiant is brimming with loss, but also with love, proving the truth of the claim which appears right at the start: “the end is the beginning of something else”. And what is impressive, above all when writing for younger readers, (…) is the way in which Ana Pessoa manages to express a certain rage at a world which seems not to make sense, at the same time as she leaves a note of hope.
Ana Dias Ferreira, Timeout magazine, 26/08/2014
(…) While Edgar is running, he can express his feelings and organize his thoughts. He himself tells the story: Memories, images, conversations, and encounters race through his mind on this day — a day with both light and dark facets, which will mark a decisive step on his path to adulthood. Quick-paced with repetitions, ruptures, and temporal leaps in the plot, the structure of the text aptly conveys the protagonist’s inner life. As young adult novels are very rarely illustrated, Bernardo P. Carvalho’s silkscreen-style pictures are indeed worth mentioning: colourful and dynamic, they accompany the story beautifully.
White Ravens Catalogue 2015, Internationale Jugendbibliothek.