City of Salzburg – Start your school career with Nali & Nora
It’s almost something of a small tradition: since 2020, first graders – including children in non-urban elementary schools – have been given a children’s book by the city of Salzburg on the first day of school. On September 12, 2022, around 1,800 girls and boys in the city of Salzburg will start their school careers and can look forward to a volume from the series “City Adventures with Nali & Nora”. The third part, subtitled “Time travel in Salzburg”, was presented on Wednesday, September 7, 2022, in the Salzburg City: Library in the presence of Deputy Mayor Bernhard Auinger, who is responsible for schools and childcare. The many young visitors were also able to enjoy excerpts from the new book in the form of a reading by the author Lisa-Viktoria Niederberger for the first time.
The idea behind it is to give children a back-to-school gift that they will remember for a long time. At the same time, the story should make you want to learn to read. The books are designed in such a way that the girls and boys recognize things from their everyday life and at the same time learn new things about the city of Salzburg away from tourist sights. “For many children, the start of school is also the start of a great adventure. The book should be a souvenir of the first day of school, bring joy to the children and make a contribution to promoting reading. Because we know it can’t start soon enough,” says Auinger, adding: “The adventures of Nali and Nora are very popular with the children and are a real success story. Thank you to all the opportunity for this important project.”
Adventures in the House of City History
In the third volume, the protagonists – the axolotl Nali and the girl Nora – deal with what Salzburg looked like more than a hundred years ago. They doubt that there was ever a tram through Getreidegasse and therefore want to know for sure. For their research, they head to the House of City History. There they spend an exciting day learning more about the work in the archive, getting to know the “Frauenspuren” project, looking at old photos, helping to restore a book and experiencing a little journey through time.
Author Lisa-Viktoria Niederberger and illustrator Sandra Brandstätter also designed the third volume. Josef Kirchner from the Mosaic platform has taken over the coordination of the book project.
Lisa Viktoria Niederberger: Born in 1988, lives in Linz, studied art history and German in Salzburg, works as editor of the literary magazine email, as a bookseller and with Freies Radio. Her literary debut mistletoe, a short prose volume, was published in edition.mosaik in 2018. Prizes and awards: Upper Austrian talent promotion award 2019, starter grant 2021, art promotion award of the city of Linz 2021 and Theodor Körner promotion award 2021. Currently studying cultural sciences at the University of Art and Design Linz, working on the debut novel and children’s book projects, reviews and cultural journalism articles in regional media .
Sandra Brandstaetter: Born in Salzburg in 1980, possibly multimedia art at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. She currently lives in Berlin, where she works as an illustrator and character designer for animated films. They act on animation projects like the series Trude’s animal (Broadcast mit der Maus/WDR) and the Oscar-nominated miniseries Rebellious rhymes/BBC with. Her children’s comic debut Paula: Love letter of terror was published by Reprodukt in 2016. this year is Ada & Zangemann (Text: Matthias Kirschner/ Publisher: O’Reilly), a children’s book about programming appeared as well as thePicture book L for love (Text: Martin Baltscheit/Kindermann Verlag), which deals with playful themes such as love, different family and relationship constellations, diversity and acceptance.
mosaic is a platform for communicating and networking contemporary literature. Print and online publications as well as events in synergy with other art forms and aim to promote current voices and their diversity. Here the focus is on the work. Mosaic wants to create spaces to question the discourse on literature and art and to enable new approaches. The eponymous picture emerges from the totality of these activities.