Lapitch the Little Shoemaker (Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića) is children’s novel by the most famous Croatian woman writer Ivana Brlić Mažuranić (1874 - 1938). The granddaughter of the first Croatian governor commoner and poet Ivan Mažuranić, she grew up in the atmosphere of spiritual creation and got married also into equally so old and intellectual family Brlić from Slavonski Brod. She began to write literature for her own children, but she was soon recognised first in Croatian literature and thereafter her works were translated in forty foreign languages. She was a Nobel Prize candidate and was nicknamed Croatian Andersen.
The apprentice Lapitch is a shoemaker’s apprentice, an orphan delivered to bad tempers of his master Mrkonja and quite kindness of his wife. When the master’s injustice becomes too much to bear, Lapitch runs away into the world followed by the dog Bundaš. In several short and endless days, in the world where remoteness was not difficult to reach - already at the outskirts of the town - Lapitch meets many good and bad people and with his humanity affects their fates always for better. On his way he meets a girl from circus, Gita and her parrot. After numerous adventures it is discovered that Gita is in fact Marica - a long time ago kidnapped daughter of the master Mrkonja. Transformed by gratitude and happiness into another kind of person, Mrkonja will offer home to both, Marica and Lapitch. And, in far future Lapitch and Gita - as he will always call her - will found their own family and be good parents to their children and little apprentices.
To today’s generations who tremble over destinies of various virtual heroes it is not difficult to grasp that the history consists of real and fictional beings. To the latter in Croatia belongs also the history of the apprentice Lapitch. Already for hundred years, from the moment he was created by Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, he has been participating in growing up of children and keeping the magic of childhood in souls of grown ups. How is it possible that the shoemaker’s apprentice, the boy Lapitch managed to survive the whole century in which the world has undergone such remarkable changes?
The world in which Lapitch lives is a small world. In it everything is within hand’s reach and familiar. However, when we look at it closer - as with magnifying glass - at this tiny, everyday's inventory - a tripod chair, awl, maize cob, a blue star painted on the little house, parrot, a pair of little boots… Ivana Brlić Mažuranić reveals strange dimensions of the seemingly familiar; endless interspaces and an interval made of small steps; a possibility to produce miracle with few common gestures and objects - like the appearance of Gita, dog Bundaš and parrot on the flower decorated cart. The simplicity of the presented world is paralleled with the simplicity of words. Like in Tales of Long Ago (Priče iz davnine) and in Fables and Fairy Tales (Bajke i basne), Ivana Brlić Mažuranić expresses the deepest life experiences, the hardest to shape truths in most direct sentences and images.
