Evelina Daciūtė, Akvilė Magicdustė. Debesų karpytojai (Cloud Cutters), Vilnius: Alma littera, 2025. – 56  p.

The poems in Cloud Cutters present the image of a happy child growing up in a loving family. The book creates a very friendly world in which the child is free to play, dream, and make mischief. In conveying the highly distinctive thinking of the child who is the lyrical subject, the poet seems to rely on authentic examples (for instance, the child wonders whether hanging upside down changes your thoughts or even your name; he imagines that someone must be cutting shapes out of the clouds). The poems reveal a playful construction of childhood fears, imaginary worlds, and adventures. The mood and worldview of the poems are echoed by the illustrations, which resemble children’s own drawings made with watercolours or gouache.

Evelina Daciūtė (b. 1975) is an author and poet who mainly writes for children; she has published 17 books for young readers. She received the IBBY Lithuania Section award for the best picture book in 2015 for the Drambliai ėjo į svečius (Elephants Came to Visit), created with illustrator Inga Dagilė. In 2022, she won the same award for Pasakojimas apie katiną ir tulpę (A Story about a Cat and a Tulip), created with illustrator Aušra Kiudulaitė. Daciūtė’s most widely acclaimed book is Laimė yra lapė (Fox on a Swing, 2016), also created with Kiudulaitė. It received the IBBY Lithuania Section prize for the most beautiful picture book, and readers selected it as the best children’s book of the year. In 2019 the American Library Association awarded the book the Batchelder Award, given for an outstanding children’s book originally written in a language other than English and published in the United States. The book was also included in the international catalogue of outstanding children’s literature, The White Ravens.

Akvilė Magicdustė (Misevičiūtė) is an illustrator and creator of comics and public murals. She studied at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and at the Sint-Lukas School of Arts in Brussels, where she specialised in comics. For her work in Cloud Cutters, she was nominated for the Illustration of the Year prize at the Book Awards 2026.

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