Nonetheless,

The children’s book entitled Nonetheless, is a novel / short story collection about two brothers, Damjan and Marko, and their friends in the neighborhood where they live. Although each story functions as an individual narrative, it is also part of the larger narrative in which all the stories are interconnected and the events in them take place in a period of a year and a half, so the book also functions as a novel. It is also interactive in the sense that there are questions at certain points in all of the stories that encourage children to think about the issues raised in them. The specific characteristic of these stories are their impressive characters who are not idealized, but have the characteristics of real children – they are curious, energetic, but also angry, sad, shy or irritated. The book discusses issues and problems that today’s children face, such as: beautiful as well as stressful events in the kindergartens and schools, bullies in the neighborhood, books, computer games, lost toys, movement to another school, new environment, loneliness, finding friends, communication with children from other nationalities, rivalry between siblings. Such issues are presented in a realistic context, in which occasionally the fantastic interferes, especially when children’s imagination dominates. The plot complications in each story are announced with the word/s “nonetheless” – in which case the usual daily situation gets complicated as a result of certain circumstances.