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The Kiosk by Anete Melece  {Reviewed by STELLA} If you sat inside a kiosk all day what would you dream about? Olga dreams about a place far away, watching a beautiful sunset. Olga has worked in the kiosk in a busy city for many years; some may think too many. Every day regular customers come by with their wants and needs, some like clockwork, running past at exactly 10:35 am to buy water, and others collecting their morning papers or magazines or just stopping for a chat. There are always tourists who have lost their way and Olga is adept at giving instructions on how to get to the art gallery or museum. Every night Olga settles down with her magazine about faraway places and armchair travels. Olga has worked in the kiosk for so long she can no longer fit out the door. One day the bundled newspapers are left a little further away from her door than usual. While she reaches out with a stick to drag the papers closer, two boys take the opportunity to grab some goodies from the front of the kiosk! Olga in her attempt to stop them topples over, bringing the kiosk with her. Upright again, she goes about making order in her small world and surprises herself. She can walk about—and so she does! She goes for a walk, encased in the kiosk. It’s a fine feeling, even if some of the locals look either startled or a bit bemused. All is fine until she meets one of her regular customers, the man with the excitable dog, on a bridge across the river in the park. The dog runs around her feet and she topples over into the water. Olga floats, which is a good thing—the kiosk is proving to be a suitable vessel—but where will she end up? Let’s just say it involves ice cream... Anete Melece’s illustrations are delightful, with plenty to seek out in the pictures adding to this simple but charming tale. Whether it’s the expressions on people’s faces or the funny magazine covers (No Time) or the bird’s-eye-view pages of the city or Olga floating on the river, each page is lively in content and colour palette. The front of the book has a square cut out—the window to the kiosk—while the back is, of course, the door. Open the cover and the front endpaper is Olga’s wonderful home inside. She’s happily eating a biscuit and reading a travel magazine (palm trees and sun) surrounded by toilet paper rolls, bags of chips, lotto cards, lollipops and so on. The text is both funny and a little melancholy, but this story is mostly joyful and has a wonderful ending—you never know where an unexpected incident may take you!