Godina izdanja: Ostalo
ISBN: Ostalo
Autor: Domaći
Jezik: Engleski

Dušan Radović Volimo Beograd svakoga dana po malo
Belgrade 1977.
NOVA
Let`s love Belgrade a little more each day is a little picture book for children and adults, but also a brochure that invites citizens to protect their city. It was released more than forty years ago, but it seems to me that we still need it more than today.

Dusko Radovic liked to write about Belgrade and the people of Belgrade, but he also hosted a radio show of the Belgrade Initiative in which citizens gave their ideas and suggestions on what can be done well in Belgrade and for Belgrade. That is why it was logical to entrust Radović with the campaigns of the City of Belgrade for the preservation of the environment, as well as the Tourist Association of Belgrade for the promotion of cultural property and tourism.

The then mayor of Belgrade, Živorad Kovačević, invited elementary school students to the City Assembly on October 20, 1977 or 1978 to mark the anniversary of the city`s liberation. On that occasion, the children received (along with chocolate!) A copy of the book We Love Belgrade a little bit every day.

The United Nations declared 1979 the International Year of the Child, which is why initiatives and actions were launched throughout Yugoslavia. In the same year, the Children`s Book Center was founded in the Pioneer City in Belgrade, and on that occasion, an exhibition of literary and literary works We Love Belgrade was organized every day. At the initiative of the City Library, a new international cooperation was achieved - the exchange of books between the children of Belgrade and the children of European countries. At the event Meetings of Friendship, and as part of the Joy of Europe, children from other countries were presented with works by Yugoslav children`s writers, including Duško Radović.

But let’s get back to the book itself!

In this brochure, Radović invites Belgraders to respect and protect their city. It talks about demolition and construction, friends and enemies of the city, a sense of belonging (yours or ours), children`s responsibility, nature as an inviolable part of the city and many other aspects. Although it addresses the people of Belgrade, this book is universal and everyone should find themselves and their city in it.

The text by Dušan Radović would not be complete without illustrations by Dušan Petričić. The text itself would be strict and wave its finger at the lessons if there were no fun illustrations by Petričić that soften the message. But by no means do they make it weaker!

Two Dusans (writer and illustrator) were long-term collaborators and friends and together they published books - Sit to talk, Belgraders and Belgrade, TV cookbooks, Women`s conversations, etc.

We love Belgrade every day begins a little with verses from the song `Toast` - Everything that grows would like to grow, let it grow and should grow!

The illustration and text above are, it seems to me, more than current today. After, as Radović says, enough demolition, today Belgrade is still being demolished (Belgrade Bus and Railway Station, Trg republike, Savamala) in order to build underground parking lots, elite parts of the city, Belgrade on the water. And when is Belgrade guarded? It seems to have been left to civic initiative, not government.

The responsibility of the child permeates the entire brochure, so in this illustration Petričić emphasizes that a child, side by side, can protect and build his city with adults.

The street, the park, the river are nobody`s, as is often thought. The street, the park and the river are ours and belong to all of us. That is why we should keep and defend everything that is ours.

This message is not harmless at all, especially since we can still find ourselves in these words of Radović. Take the mini-hydropower plants on the Stara Planina as an example. The old mountain, its rivers, waterfalls are nobody`s, but ours. The problem of their construction is not the problem of the people from that area who get drinking water from there, but all of us. Because today it could be a river in eastern Serbia, and tomorrow a park next to your building.

It is considered one of the greatest inventions of the last century, the car is today a country that is a cigarette to the lungs. Cars are one of the biggest air pollutants and contribute to global warming, a fact.

And it`s not (only) the cars that are to blame, it`s the fault of the man who uses them to go to the store instead of walking to it for five minutes. It is a wrong society in which one of the indicators of status is whether the family has (at least one) car.

Let`s walk more, use public transport, travel by trains and buses, connect someone ...