First Books (ages 3-8) • Series

Gülümseten Öyküler Dizisi

Galata'nın Tembel Martısı
Galata’s Lazy Seagull

Behiç Ak

Editor: Müren Beykan

What happens if the Galata Tower is renovated?

In this “cheerful story”Behiç Akmakes the readers to think about showing respect to the lives of other living beings in order to be able to live happily and peacefully together in a big city.

The story which takes Galata Tower, one of the historical symbols of İstanbul, in its center, is telling how big social responsibility movements can develop out of a small community.

This is a unique city tale making the readers to think about how technological communication tools cause people to become alienated to real life and the reality of social networks like facebook, twitter.

Overview

In contrary to her elder brother Emre, Hülya has no interest in internet and technology at all. What she understands well and interested in is the language of animals, and she even sends her messages by pigeons. She is very much worried when she learns that the Galata Tower in their neighborhood will be renovated and the tower will completely be surrounded with a curtain during renovation. The reason for her worry is the nests of swift birds between the wall stones of the tower. Getting together with her brother to save the lives of baby swift birds in the nests, they try to find a way to make the local authorities understand the importance of their worry. But would the seagull Murteza do anything to save his baby birds?

AUTHOR

Behiç Ak

He was born in Samsun and studied architecture in Yıldız University and İstanbul Technical University. He’s a well-known cartoonist, author, illustrator, and documentary film director. He draws daily cartoons for Cumhuriyet Newspaper since 1982. His cartoons were exhibited in several countries like Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. Besides his plays Separation (Ayrılık) and Building (Bina), his two other plays Fault Line (Fay Hattı) and City for One (Tek Kişilik Şehir) were staged in Europe and attracted big interest. The documentary film he produced and directed in 1994, […]
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