★Rights sold: Romania!
★“How to Handle a Child” is mock ‘how to’ book on parenthood (think Edward Gorey’s Recently Deflowered Girl: the Righting to Say on Every Dubious Occasion’).

　　The book embraces the most arguable questions of parenthood, never really yielding a single sober advice. The underpinning is – people shouldn’t be taught how to handle their kids. They should be soothed that parenthood is a most perplexing task in the universe, and so, whatever they are doing, they are doing a great job. Mistakes and failures are inevitable, joys and rewards sporadic, but with a little bit of humor and philosophy, the whole parenting business is a priceless fuel for observing life itself.

　　All the episodes in the book are based on true stories and conversations with my kids – Adam (aged three), Liran (aged six), and Alex (aged eleven). Each of the 22 episodes starts out with a maxim uttered by a child, be it the ‘AAAAAAA’ of the newborn or a teenager’s verdict on life. The rest of the story elaborates on this ‘prophecy’, trying to deduct wisdom, lesson or principle, in the manner of a parable. The resulting stories are full of subtle humor, truth and are instantly recognizable and appealing to anyone who has dared to tread the unpredictable, full of trial, error and humility path of parenthood.

　　Each episode is illustrated with a scene from the author’s own childhood, loosely related to the topic of the text. The illustrations balance between the ‘child’s eyesight perception’ (magic, unreal, enchanted, yet taken for granted as solid fact of life – just as kids do) and brutal truth (things that did actually take place and were actually the way they are depicted in the illustration. The truth is – the reality is way wilder than any fiction.

　　The illustrations address adult readers. After all, no matter how dramatically different their childhood was from that of their kids, the core things that make childhood what it is are intact the freshness of perception, the agony of growing up, the mischief, and the absence of borderline between the real and the unreal.

Sveta Dorosheva

　　Sveta Dorosheva is no less than a magician. A 34-year old author and illustrator, linguist and designer, copyrighter and art director, she manages to create stories where words and images so magically intertwine they create a whole new universe, stories so unique they turn the world on its head and Sveta lives in Israel with her husband and two children.

How to have a child
How to birth a child
How to use a newborn child
How to name your child
Where to put the child you’ve birthed
How to understand what a child is for
How to wash a child
How to understand what your child wants from you
How to make your child sleep
How to cure your child of illness
How to make your child speak properly
How to make your child be quiet
How to understand what your child is doing
How to survive your child’s temper tantrum
How to deal to your child’s mischief
How to make your child good
What to do if your child isn’t as good as you’d hoped
How and what to teach your child
How to play with your child
How to punish your child
How to lie to your child
How to fix the upbringing your gave to your child