Renowned author of children’s and young people’s books Thomas Brez­i­na was guest of 2014’s sec­ond DIALOGUE with Markus Hengstschläger. They talked about how our soci­ety needs to make use of the oppor­tu­ni­ties held by otherness.

Brez­i­na and Hengstschläger co-wrote a children’s book revolv­ing around a group of kids who are out­siders at school due to them being dif­fer­ent than their school­mates. In the course of the sto­ry, these kids are able to turn their per­ceived dis­ad­van­tages like ADHD, aller­gies or dyslex­ia into assets that enable them to save the day.

Brez­i­na pleads that kids should be enabled to find and exer­cise their tal­ents and pas­sions instead of adults try­ing to mould them accord­ing to their own expectations.

Thomas Brez­i­na is an Aus­tri­an author of children’s and young people’s books, pup­pet the­aters, screen­plays and audio books, as well as a TV-mod­er­a­tor and direc­tor. He is one of the most suc­cess­ful authors of books for chil­dren and young peo­ple in the Ger­man lan­guage. Brezina’s books have been trans­lat­ed into 35 lan­guages. He lives in Vien­na and London.