"Flying Outside the Box" by Yotam Schwimmer, HaPinkas (an online journal of literature and culture for children), 2015

"...The most notable aspect of the book And Then the Rhinoceros Began to Fly (apart from its wonderful and intriguing title), written and illustrated by Nadia Adina Rose, is its format. This is a large, rectangular book that is meant to be read vertically, rather than horizontally. Opening the book is like lifting the lid of (e.g.) a box, with the multiples being displayed in a vertical format, and the readers looking down at them. While this format is not new, it is extremely rare in Israeli books, and it changes our customary mode of reading. This unusual format is no mere gimmick; rather, it has an in-story justification. The conceptual change required by the format interacts with the essence of the story on both the psychological and the literary-poetic levels..."

>> Click here for the full article (in Hebrew)

"Brief Reviews of Three Children's Books..." by Yarin Katz, Korebasfarim (a literary magazine), 2015

"...This book is very unusual in the context of children's literature. First, on the technical level: the pages are designed to be turned from top to bottom, rather than from right to left; second, Nadia Adina Rose's illustrations are photographs of specially-made paper dough, interspersed with leaves and branches; third, the story itself, which is basically a single poem divided into segments of two lines. The story deals with dreams and ambitions, and with ways of realizing them: the tortoise dreamed of seeing the whole road, so it climbed high and saw the horizon; the bird was lonely in the sky, so it dove into the sea to meet new friends; the owl lived in the night and never saw the light of day, until it decided to wait for the sunrise - and so on and so forth, until the appearance of the girl (presumably, the author's alter ego), who ends the story on an ars-poetical note: "The girl enjoyed painting in various colors. She would illustrate books written by others, but wished to write her own. She knew rhinoceroses that can fly, so she wrote this book".

It is hard to say to what extent children are going to appreciate the uniqueness of this book, but I have no doubt that many adults are going to appreciate it – so much so that we may be dealing with a  "children's book for adults".

On the last page of the book, there are a few blank lines under the heading "And my dream is", which invite the children and the parents to think of their own dreams..."

>> Click here for the full article (in Hebrew)