On The Planet Of The Jesters

By Daphne Yakinthou

A planet where cruelty and madness is the rule, where laughter is a constant torture. When a kind hearted jester revolts, he has to confront a whole inhumane system. Will he conform, will he be crashed in his quest for freedom or will he accidentally change the world? A mind blowing book full of meaning. Follow Giggles on his search for true feeling, discover with him a love that transforms the one who feels it, face treachery in the midst of bliss and find out how a single person that doesn’t give up can make a difference! A book for all those young and older children that don’t want to conform and believe our world can become a better place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daphne Yakinthou
• Release date: May 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310386527

Daphne Yakinthou

Daphne Tzamali “Yakinthou” was born in Athens in 1981. From a very young age she showed an active imagination and loved creating stories that offered her the chance to give life to colorful characters embarking on exciting adventures. At the age of thirteen she wrote her first book, taught herself how to draw, while taking at the same time singing lessons to become an opera singer.At the age of twenty five she wrote and illustrated her first epic adventure for young people and decided to pursue a writing career. At 2012 she publishes with Ocelotos Editions “Astrozacharenia istoria”, the tale of the starsugary Ballerina and the clown Babolino and a year later “Grumpy’s lesson”, another story targeted at the same age group. She has also published many e-books in greek. Among them are the stories “I want to be a prince” “Dewdrop’s child”, “The crystal knight, “The blessed prince”, “The queen of lightning” and many more. She has also published with Fylatos Editions the e-book “The tale of the white harlequin”.Daphne Tzamali, pseudonym “Yakinthou”, is a member of the greek IBBY – International Board on Books for Young people.Today she is dividing her time between all her different artistic activities and her beloved pets. She is still living in Athens.

Book preview

On the Planet of the Jesters

All Rights Reserved

Copyright©2016 Daphne Tzamali (Yankinthou)

Published by Ink Blood Publishing

All Rights Reserved. This Book May Not Be Reproduced, Transmitted, or Stored In Whole or Part or In Part by any Means, Including Graphic, Electronic, or Mechanical Without the Express Written Consent of the Publisher Except In The Case Of Brief Quotations Embodied In Critical Articles and Reviews

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TOC

Dedication

About the Author

Sneak Preview

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To my beloved mother

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Somewhere in a remote galaxy, on the planet of the red jesters, in the colorful and picturesque city of Gibberia, where everybody speaks fluent gibberish, there were many strict laws that no one dared defy, unless he was ready to receive ten to a hundred whacks as a punishment.

The most important Gibberian law had been enacted by Great Ridiculous himself, the city founder, and could be summarized in the following phrase:

Laugh at all costs!

That doesn’t sound so bad, will think many of you. After all, is there anything healthier than laughter? But, if you think carefully, you will soon find that things aren’t as harmless as they may seem at first glance. Laugh at all costs means you have to laugh even when you are not in the mood to do so, when you are sad or something awful has happened to you or to your friend or to your neighbor and certainly everybody can see that is not so nice.

Now some of you will think that great Ridiculous, who had come up with this law, must not have been right in the head, but then what successful jester is completely sane? None whatsoever. People don’t call them fools for nothing.

As if having to laugh all the time wasn’t enough, there was something even worse, something absolutely dreadful you had to endure if you wanted to continue living in Gibberia: crying was forbidden on pain of death. Even baby jesters weren’t allowed to cry and so, if they needed to be changed or fed, they had to giggle and they giggled in such an annoying nerve racking way that their parents ran as fast as they could to satisfy their every need, great or small.

In Gibberia there lived the hero of this tale, a jester who answered to the name of Giggles Ticklefoot. Giggles found it extremely hard to comply with Gibberian laws and for that reason he had been punished numerous times with hundreds of whacks with the cane. He hadn’t received them all at once of course, but still it was not a pleasant business. Giggles never laughed as much as the authorities would find adequate, when a flower pot dropped on someone’s head, when someone fell down or generally when something unpleasant happened to another jester.

It’s no wonder that the most popular shops in Gibberia where those that sold pranks and all kinds of materials for practical jokes: chairs with nearly sawed off legs, so that whoever attempted to sit on them would fall clumsily down, candies and treats tasting like red hot chili pepper, exploding cigars, books titled ‘A hundred fun ways to make someone trip’ and other similarly ill tasted jokes. Such tricks were extremely popular in Gibberia and jesters used to buy cartloads of them to mess with their friends and laugh their hearts out.

A store such as this was owned by Giggles’ best friend Beansprout Eggpeeler. He always advised him to laugh all the time. Idiotic laughter, he used to say, is a matter of practice. The more one laughs without serious reason, the easier it becomes to laugh at each silly little thing and spare oneself unneeded beating with the cane.

Giggles did his best to follow his friend’s advice. He tried to giggle foolishly, even when nothing even remotely funny occurred, but such a thing proved impossible. The funny thing was that it was easier for Giggles to laugh when something bad happened to him, than it was when it happened to someone else. One of the rare moments he could laugh for real was when others pulled a prank on him and he fell for it. For that reason he sought to become an easy target for all sorts of tricks and jokes. Though laughing wasn’t as easy for Giggles as it was for other jesters, he had never reached the other extreme, I mean crying.

Crying was an unforgivable act of defiance that led to certain death. In fact, even when a jester was beaten with a stick, he was forced to laugh and that naturally made the punishment even more inhumane. It’s to be expected that, when something so natural is so strictly forbidden, one has a constant desire to do it, but since no one was eager to be punished in the severe way dictated by this cruel law, they suppressed this completely natural urge to cry and indulged in all sorts of sadistic pranks and practical jokes targeted at their fellow jesters.

Giggles would probably do the same, but unfortunately for him he had a gentle character, well disposed towards others, completely out of place in this harsh, unfriendly environment. So Giggles craved a good cleansing cry and I don’t mean a