ARRUGAS
Paco Roca
NORMA

Paco Roca won the National Comic Award in Spain for this book, later adapted to a wonderful film version. We can see through its pages the Alzheimer illness and its effect on the protagonists, all narrated in a hard and tender way.

 

This book is highly recommended fro young people, actually for all ages. Mixing up drama and humour, with a bearable balance, it goes through the illness, the families, the old folk's homes, pain, friendship, ... It is a desire to live, to take advantage of life itself, and a metaphor of the struggle to keep one's identity.

 

Asthetically clean, with an agile trace, of flat colours and delicate pallette, it shows kindly depicted characters.

"Arrugas" ("Wrinkles") is a work of feelings, very deep, told from the inside of characters, leading us more and more to the core of their lives. It is essential to have it at school libraries.

- Make groups of four people. Each groups has a mission, find samples of film shots: the group in charge of CLOSE-UPS, MEDIUM SHOTS, AMERICAN SHOTS, LONG SHOTS, FULL SHOTS. Once you find the samples, copy them and cut them out. Stick them on a board and show them to your fiends. You can also give a short speech on them.

- After reading the book, make a project on EMOTIONS. Find scenes and close shots where the characters are feeling some specific emotions: find sadness, happyness, anger, forgetfulness. Cut them and stick them in categories, You will find out that drawings are good vehicles to show feelings.

- Old people usually lose some memory, even though they don not suffer from Alzheimer. But they are real chests of wisdom, for the amout of experiences they lived. Think of a topic you like (school, games, travelling,...) and make an interview about it to an old person you know. You will discover fantastic things, for sure!

- In this book TIME is nearly a character (the past, the present, memories, ...). There are lots of flashbacks and ellipses. Make a selection of them. Then you can make an almost scientific experiment: calculate the exact time skipped in each of them.

- Choose your favourite page from the book and tell your friends why you chose it (maybe the design, or because it is mute, or for its emotions, ...)

- Both protagonists fulfill a stereotype: the complementary characters. make a description of them two, paying special attention to the details that make them different. By the way, that theory of couples of characters was already created by Aristotle, in ancient Greece!