About the book "A tiny hand full of sirup"

“Ena gemato melia heraki” "A tiny hand full of honey" 
Year of edition: 2001 
Publisher: PATAKIS (Athens, Greece) 
Illustrated by Spiros Goussis

State Honors, 1979

DESCRIPTION
When little Timos opened the door hasty and ready to make mischief again, he stayed with the lollipop in his mouth. Before him was his… grandpa! But how come? He knew his grandpa had gone up there in the sky! Might God have left him come down to earth again?




Behind the title "A tiny hand full of honey" ...


"In 1977 I happened to read in a daily newspaper:
"In a town of France an old single man died leaving his entire fortune in a little neighbor, because, as he wrote in his will, " ... the first day that we met he gave me his lollipop and this hand, full of honey, straight to my palm was what was most beautiful in my life."
"This little news, along with the fact that my father had recently died and my newborn son would never know him made me write "A hand full of honey"... I wrote it in one night staying up all night over my baby’s cradle, while he was crying incessantly, as if mourning the death of his grandfather ...
When manuscript, I took it to KEDROS (a little amazed publisher at the time) and handed it to the publisher herself, Nana Kalianesi, (yes, Nana had already "adopted" me as a writer), who put me to read it on the attic where her office was. When I finished reading, I saw her smiling happy. "We’ll publish it" she said. It was the fourth book I had written so far. Unknown yet. To have your book published at the time you had to wait in line. "When do you think it is to be published?" I asked timidly. "For such books, Voula, there’s no queue!" she answered with a broad smile and I took that response to be a bigger prize than those I had already taken for two stories of mine the previous year.

Here is the old edition

First edition 1978, Publisher KEDROS
         Illustrator: Nina Stamatiou