Hans Domenego Die Zeiger standen auf halb vier (The Clock Struck Half Past Three) Dachs Verlag, July 2000, 128 pp. ISBN 3-85191-208-X Eberhard (Ebbi) is only two when he recognises that something is wrong. As an acquaintance has exclaimed, he has used a relative clause! He doesn't quite know what this means but becomes aware that he is way ahead of most two-year-olds, especially the ones who still wear nappies, and realises that he would be wise to learn to behave like the others. So instead of answering intelligently when spoken to he clings to his mother's jeans with a baby smile - which the adults love. But he continues to listen. Radio, television, adults talking together - he takes everything in. And that is how this story about a small Austrian community is presented to its young readers - through Ebbi's eyes and ears. The span is three years. Ebbi's father is an explorer and is absent for the first two of them, but grumpy Grandma, who subsidises the family's meagre income, offers much unwanted advice. It is after one such visit by Grandma that Ebbi confides in his mother and begs her to teach him to read and write. 'I'm not really an introverted type', he explains, and they both fall about laughing. His mother is enormously relieved to have someone around she can talk to, while Ebbi, 'recording like a supermarket camera', can make notes on the oblivious grown-ups and observe his mother, who 'can laugh with her eyes'. A lover of children, he comforts a sickly small girl. He records a hilarious scene in which her father, a singer, required by the council to prove his artistic status, booms till his huge bass voice shakes the walls. He rumbles a dodgy councillor. A development aid worker, at first misunderstood, smoothes many difficulties, and on Ebbi's sixth birthday three sensible people can sit chatting intelligently at their cafe table. A funny, stylish story, with a touch of passion to lace it, that will charm children, and their parents, from the start.