This is a book that teaches you how to pay attention. Through the eyes of a child, or the childself of a poet, we witness the world of a small Andalusian town as refracted through the luminous presence of Platero, a donkey both fluffy and wise. Each brief chapter is a vignette, a meditation, a small miracle of noticing: the taste of figs, the way light falls on whitewashed walls, the conversations between boy and beast that somehow contain the whole of existence. Jiménez was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1956, and this is the book that explains why. It has the compression of poetry and the warmth of a summer that never ends. For readers who have ever loved an animal with their whole heart, or who remember what it felt like to be young enough to find the world endlessly fascinating, Platero y Yo offers a return to that place where everything is alive and worth noticing.
