Once, there was a war. When the war ended, we didn't have a home. 'Never mind,' my mother said. 'We have a car.' So we lived in the car. And from then on, we lived on the road. The Beginning contrasts tenderness with horror, imagination with terrible hardship, and the strength of close family ties with the human drama. Paula Carballeira is skilfully turns the cruel, devastating effects of war into a beautiful poem, while the hyper-realistic illustrations by Sonja Danowski take readers into the ruins of the bombardment.