The Fairy Tale About Lene: The Beautiful and Domesticated Snake

About the Book

Central to tale is the idea that respect and admiration for all living creatures should be a part of childhood. Children learn how to interact with other living creatures by observing adults – and LENE hopes to facilitate a dialogue between children and parents, teachers, and other caring adults. Whether visiting a city park or camping in the forest it is important to have respect, admiration, and understanding for the natural world. LENE was written to inspire an unusual view nature, a passion to both save and enjoy the planet, and a love for all life we have on this remarkable globe called EARTH.

It is imperative for our safety that we rescue everything we have damaged. We must prevent further destruction by putting an end to the contamination of our air, rivers, and seas, and the deforestation of our woods. It is incredible how generations of humans have destroyed parts of our globe – and that humans can not repair the damage alone; humans need the assistance of nature.

In the first chapter, we open with a short tale of a zoomorphic creation, in which we are all living creatures and where the human creatures are to tend to the entirety of God’s creation.

The two subsequent chapters deal with human interactions with animals. Keeping with children’s interest, Mr. Zwar introduces animals and the culturally based concepts of animals to the reader. Señor Flores adds charm to the descriptions, motives which provide a focus throughout this story’s narration, where the Family as a social nucleus plays a very important role.

The touching illustrations of Señor Flores are full of emotion and display a straightforward use of color, movement, and in some cases magic, make the reading of this book a thoughtful adventure in happiness.

The family Zwar, here represented by the children and “Opi Uli” are used for the purpose of creating the possibilities for others (the readers) to re-open doors – illustrating the love and affection of family members caring for each other.

In reality Opi Uli has shown great love for his grandson Jonas and his granddaughter Madeleine. In 1992, Señor Flores witnessed Opi Uli’s creation of a wooden farm containing, animals and all the modern facilities that a farmer could ever desire. Three years later, using his architectural expertise, Opi Uli handcrafted a unique dollhouse, complete with fashionably dressed wooden dolls (representing members of the family), and appliances for the dollhouse that came to be known later as the Palace. Señor Flores enjoyed this project and participated giving life to the dolls, making up their faces and styling their hair. This latest project, LENE has been another collaborative effort. Together Opi Uli and Señor Flores added enhancements to the tale of LENE, such as the knitting pattern of LENE, which to be executed with approximately 18,000 knots of brilliant colors, added in the appendix.

We think that grandparents and grandchildren should enjoy a close cordial relationship.

Finally a short reference is provided to show how different cultures and religions view the existence of snakes on this planet. And as a stimulus the major drawings have been blown up to give children the experience of coloring them, making them vibrant with splendor, giving them life, and creative self-expression.

The book is dedicated to children ages 4 to 10, and represents a marvelous gift from grandparents to youngsters.

The book exists in English, but will be followed with Spanish and German editions.