★An endearing portrait of those first special days of elementary school through the lens of an extraordinary friendship.

It’s the first day of elementary school, and Käthe is very excited. Goodbye, kindergarten!
But when she arrives in the classroom, she gets so nervous that she can’t say a word. To make matters worse, the girl sitting next to her, Shrimpie, really wants to talk to her.
Somehow, though, an endearing friendship ensues, and soon they begin to throw the village into chaos with their funny mischief.
These hilarious, touching, and captivating episodes come together to form a timeless, authentic portrait of those early school days that change your whole life, when anticipation and fears lie so close together.

MONI PORT is a French-born German illustrator, graphic designer, and author. She worked as a cover designer at Eichborn Verlag for many years and founded the Labor Ateliergemeinschaft studio collective in Frankfurt am Main with Anke Kuhl and Philip Waechter in 1995. Since 2020, she has run her own studio Studio soundso. Moni Port writes and illustrates books for children and adults. In addition to her own works, such as Das mutige Buch (Klett Kinderbuch), which won the Leipzig Reading Compass award, she has created a series of books with illustrator Philip Waechter, published by Klett Kinderbuch. Port has also published collaborative works with her studio Labor colleagues, including KinderKünstlerKritzelbücher (Children’s Artist Doodle Books) and Alles gut (It's All Good), the latter of which was nominated for the German Youth Literature Prize (both Beltz & Gelberg). Together with Anke Kuhl, she edited the children’s comic anthology Musikkalender: Comics on Music (Reprodukt). Moni Port lives with her husband and son in Frankfurt am Main.

CLAUDIA WEIKERT is a German illustrator, editor and comic artist from Vogelsberg. She has illustrated numerous successful children’s and young adult books, including stories about Fox and Piper (with Bjørn F. Rørvik, published by Klett Kinderbuch) and Little Donkey Liebermeier (with Martin Baltscheit, published by Loewe). Having originally trained as an interior designer, she began illustrating children’s books as a member of the renowned Frankfurt studio community Labor, among other things. Since then, she has published numerous children’s books. In 2024, she won the Carl Richter Prize for her cover illustration for Pepe und der Oktopus. She also works as a multimedia editor for ZDF children’s television and lives and works in Wiesbaden.