Z is for Zou

Zou is a little zebra created by Michel Gay, a popular French author and illustrator. It's another cracking  picture book from Gecko Press, published in 2008.


In a situation parents and small children everywhere will recognise instantly, Zou would like a cuddle in Mummy and Daddy's bed. Unfortunately, Mummy and Daddy just won't wake up, and when they do, they're terribly grumpy. What can he do about this? Then he has an inspiration - coffee! They need lots of coffee...

It's a sweet story, beautifully illustrated (and fortunately it hasn't actually inspired the boys to try and operate the coffee machine or kettle!). Sadly, the translator doesn't seem to be named, but Zou and the Box of Kisses (Gecko Press, 2011) is translated by Linda Burgess. Both boys took to it at once, and it was lovely to hear fils aîné reading it to his little brother on a similar Saturday morning not so long ago.

"One cup for Mu-u-u-mmy... One cup for Da-a-a-ddy..."

It was also translated for Clarion Press in the US by Marie Mianowski under the title Zee in 2003, as was Zee is Not Scared (2004).

Here's hoping that Zou à vélo (L'Ecole des Loisirs, 2005) and Les Sous de Zou (L'Ecole des Loisirs, 2011) will also soon be available in English!

Y is for Kazumi Yamoto

Kazumi Yamoto is a Japanese author and musician. Her books for children and young adults often portray life in an ordinary Japanese home, and also deal with difficult issues like illness and death.

The Friends and Letters from the Living do so for young adults while The Bear and the Wildcat tackles similar themes for younger children.

Originally published in Japan in 2008, Cathy Hirano's elegant translation was published in 2011 by Gecko Press. Their strapline is "Curiously good books from around the world", which seems an excellent goal for a publisher! It also features lovely black and white illustrations by Komako Sakai, one of the most popular illustrators in Japan.

It's a sensitive and touching story of Bear, whose best friend the little bird has died. For a long time he is inconsolable, but eventually he ventures out and meets a wildcat who helps him to come to terms with his loss and face the future. Bear is able to remember the happy times he shared with the bird.

I've borrowed a copy from the library, and it has come from the bereavement section. Now I've written about it, I'll have to return it as soon as possible, just in case there's anyone out there who needs it.

W is for Weigelt

Udo Weigelt is a German author of picture books who also writes under the name of Moritz Petz.

His picture books include Spring Fever (North-South Books, 2006), illustrated by Sarah Emmanuelle Burg and translated by Marianne Martens, and Fair-Weather Friend (North-South Books, 2003), illustrated by Nora Hilb and translated by J. Alison James.

As you can see, they both feature cats, which is always a good start when it comes to getting our boys interested in them. They're also both quite sweet little stories - Spring Fever is about a tomcat named Freddy, the joys of spring and love in the air. Fair-Weather Friend features a hamster and a cat who are best friends. This doesn't go down too well with the other neighbourhood cats until the gang leader gets into danger and Fritz the hamster saves the day.

Fils cadet has sadly refused point-blank to read either of these so far, and fils aîné was rather more taken with the illustrations than the story, but hey.  You can't win them all.

S is for (Andreas) Steinhöfel...

... a multi-award winning German author and translator. His books Dirk und Ich (My Brother and I) and The Centre of My World have also been translated into English, but the most widely available is The Pasta Detectives, published in 2010 by The Chicken House and translated from the German by Chantal Wright, one of my MA colleagues. It also features new illustrations by Steve Wells. The US edition (2011) is published under the title The Spaghetti Detectives and seems not to be illustrated.

It's the story of Rico, aged 11 and a "child proddity"

-  "That's a bit like being a child prodigy, but also like the opposite. I think an awful lot, but I need a lot of time to figure things out." - 

who lives in Berlin with his mum. He has trouble telling the difference between left and right, and gets all kinds of things mixed up, yet he also notices a lot that other people don't see. He becomes friends with Oscar, who is a child prodigy but also prone to anxiety. Together they manage to solve the mystery of what exactly is going on in Rico's building, the "Aldi Kidnapper" or "Mr 2000", and the significance of the "deeper shadows".

This is another book with lots of wordplay as Rico often misunderstands what he hears. He also has difficulty with spelling, so when his teacher encourages him to write a diary the results are interesting, to say the least. As well as managing these challenges adroitly, the translation really catches Rico's voice and his view of the world - his head swirls with ideas like the balls bouncing around in a lottery machine. Some of Rico's ideas are very funny, while others are genuinely thought-provoking. You can see why it was shortlisted for the 2011 Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation. The book also won the 2011 NASEN Inclusive Children's Book Award and, with a first person narrator who seems to be somewhere on the austistic spectrum, it has invited comparisons with Mark Haddon's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.

There are two more books featuring Rico and Oscar, so let's hope that they will soon also be available in translation so that English-speaking readers can find out what happens next.

R is for 'The Rainbow Fish'

The Rainbow Fish is the most beautiful fish in the whole ocean but he is so proud and rude that the other fish start avoiding him. Soon he becomes the loneliest fish in the whole ocean and finds himself faced with a choice - will he share his beautiful scales and learn to be happy?

Written by Marcus Pfister, this international best seller, translated from the German by J. Alison James, was published by NorthSouth Books in 1992. The illustrations are bold and striking, with bright colours and shiny foil scales that catch the light. The story is sweetly told, yet almost a parable about the true source of happiness. I rather like the translation, although I've always been puzzled by "happy as a splash" - I don't have a German text to hand for purposes of comparison. Fils aîné is particularly taken with it, even wanting to know why the Rainbow Fish didn't give his very last scale away too, so he could be even happier! There are several other books in the series too - although I haven't read them - which deal with various other childhood issues such as overcoming fears and settling arguments.

Of course, it's always possible for adults to start over-analysing these things - has the rainbow fish truly changed or is he just buying fair-weather friends? What is the role of the mysterious octopus anyway? Isn't it convenient that he knows just the right number of fish to give away all but one of his scales?

I thought I was just messing about with those ideas, but when I glanced at a few reviews on-line, I discovered that the Rainbow Fish is a source of huge controversy. British critics tend to concentrate on the fact that the Rainbow Fish is required to give up his individuality to court acceptance, while certain right-wing Americans are mightily concerned that this evil book is teaching children SOCIALISM! One amazon.com reviewer suggested that the Rainbow Fish should have taught all the other fish how to get their own scales as shiny as his, so that they could all work for success instead of expecting handouts. Meanwhile, according to Neal Boortz, The Rainbow Fish is:

"the most insipid, disgusting and subversive children's book available today."

(Which makes me think it must be doing something right...) Here is a rather more balanced critique from Eric Steinman:

 "Where this book could easily be teaching honest lessons about the value of communication and sharing, it teaches flawed lessons about being liked and losing yourself to mass popularity." Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/lit-crit-the-rainbow-fish.html#ixzz1vATyotMj

 and a positive view from Anna M. Ligtenberg:

"The message in this book is more about not letting your possessions possess you, about understanding that others won't like you just because you're pretty, and about recognizing that friendship isn't about someone else adoring you but about sharing something, even if all you share is play time (not necessarily possessions)." Source: http://www.amazon.com/

Oh, and if you were wondering whether the debate is due to anything being lost in translation, I can assure you that the reviews on amazon.de are equally polarised.

Meanwhile, here's what the author has to say about it:

"Rainbow Fish has no political message. The story only wants to show us the joy of sharing. We all enjoy making presents for Holidays or birthdays and the warm feeling it gives us when we do so. I want to show children the positive aspect of sharing: To share does not only mean to give away something (what is quite hard for a child), but above all to make someone else happy– and themselves happy by doing it." Source: http://www.marcuspfister.ch/evolution.htm

Personally, I think that most of this fuss comes down to simply reading too much into it. Clearly, Pfister could have made his point in a less clumsy way and avoided such a whirl of controversy, but I also think that children are more likely to understand the book the way it's meant than adults...

What do you think? Love it or hate it? A nice message about sharing or Communist propaganda? Let me know!

P is for Mrs Pepperpot

 "There was an old woman who went to bed at night as old women usually do, and in the morning she woke up as old women usually do. But on this particular morning she found herself shrunk to the size of a pepperpot, and old women don't usually do that. The odd thing was, her name really was Mrs Pepperpot."

So begins Little Old Mrs Pepperpot  by Alf Prøysen (Red Fox, 2000, p. 7). I loved these books when I was a child, but had no idea that they were translated from Norwegian until quite recently, when it was mentioned on Twitter. Looking at it now, though, I can clearly see the Scandinavian influences in the text (in terms of food, mostly) and the original illustrations by Björn Berg. The new editions with illustrations by Hilda Offen (right) play that aspect down slightly, which I find a pity. Some of the stories are also abridged for younger readers. The Red Fox 2000 edition of Mrs Pepperpot Stories does not name the translator, but Mrs Pepperpot's Christmas and Mrs Pepperpot's Outing, at least, were translated by M. Helweg.


Mrs Pepperpot's name in Norwegian is Teskjekjerringa, meaning "the teaspoon lady", and she has been around since 1959. Because she never knows when one of her shrinking fits will happen, it can cause all kinds of problems. However, it also enables her to speak to the animals and order the sun and wind around, so she has plenty of adventures as a result. She is also very shrewd about getting things done, whatever her size. The stories are very entertaining whether for reading aloud to young children, or for more confident readers to read themselves, and there is a brisk, fairytale quality to the writing. 

(I also find myself wondering whether the creators of Grandpa in my Pocket have been influenced by Mrs Pepperpot... Mind you, Grandpa's shrinking is entirely controlled by the shrinking cap so perhaps not.)


After this little trip down memory lane, I'm feeling quite nostalgic - we really will have to introduce the boys to these stories as soon as possible!

M is for...

... the Moomins by Tove Jannson, but I was always of the school of thought that found them weird and creepy so I'm not going to write about them. Instead, I'm going to write about Miffy.

Walk of Fame, Rotterdam. Photo by Ziko van Dijk

I've had a soft spot for the little white rabbit, created by Dick Bruna over 50 years ago now, since Nijntje became a staple feature of my Dutch lessons at university. Her Dutch name is a shortening of konijntje, meaning "little rabbit". Although each language originally had it's own name for her, it was her first English translator, Olive Jones, who came up with the name Miffy - easily pronouncable around the world - by which she is now known in all languages but Dutch. Later books are translated by Patricia Crampton.

The books are as simple as the illustrations - square format for little hands, bright primary colours, fours lines of rhyming text on each pages - and Miffy has become an international style icon. There's an incredible amount of merchandising out there and she even has her own museum.

Yet despite their simplicity, Bruna manages to convey an incredible amount of emotion in a face made up of two dots and a cross. The early books might be rather dated and un-PC in their gender roles, but the books cover pretty much every aspect of toddlerdom while Miffy at the Gallery (Egmont, 2003) is a lovely introduction to modern art.

 

L is for Lindgren

German stamp from 2007 showing Astrid Lindgren and Emil

Astrid Lindgren is apparently the 18th most translated author in the world.  Also famous as an active campaigner for children's and animal rights, she wrote over 50 stories including the Emil, Karlson-on-the-Roof, Bill Bergson (Kalle Blomkvist in Swedish) and Bullerby children series. But she's best known for Pippi Longstocking, the strongest nine-year-old girl in the world.

Pippi lives alone (apart from a horse, and a monkey named Mr Nilsson) because her mother died when she was a baby and her father is lost at sea. She is fiercely self-sufficient but becomes good friends with the children next door, Tommi and Annika. Her lack of manners and education have made her contraversial with adults but incredibly popular with children ever since the first publication in 1945. It was  felt (and still is, in some quarters) that she encourages rudeness and disrespect. Yet many more people claim Pippi as a role model: a feisty, free-spirited figure showing that there's nothing girls can't do.

 Adding to the fun of the Pippi books is the way she plays with language, inventing and mispronouncing words and names, singing nonsense songs, telling jokes and making up riddles. Obviously, this sets her translators a particularly tricky challenge! In the US Pippi Longstocking was translated in 1950 by Florence Lamborn, while it was translated in the UK by Edna Hurup in 1954 and published by Oxford University Press. Meanwhile, Pippi Goes Aboard (1956) and Pippi in the South Seas (1957) were translated by Marianne Turner. For a detailed comparison of these US and UK versions, see here: Pippi Goes Abroad by Madelene Moats.

Somehow, Pippi Longstocking completely passed me by as a child. Not only did I never read them, I'd never even heard of the books until they began to crop up regularly in discussions of children's literature in translation. So, coming to write about Astrid Lindgren now, I had some catching up to do...

I read the newest translation by Tiina Nunnally (also OUP), published in 2007 and illustrated by Lauren Child of Charlie and Lola fame. Nunnally's translation is described as "sparkling" by the publishers and it certainly reads well. Combined with Child's illustrations it brings a modern air to the book - there are a lot of typographical quirks strongly reminiscent of the Charlie and Lola books. Judging by the examples in the essay I linked to above, it seems closer to the Lamborn translation than the Hurup - perhaps unsurprisingly as Nunnally is also American. She has a deft touch with the word play too - just to use one of the examples quoted by Moats, Pippi makes up a little rhyming ditty as she cooks pancakes for her friends.

The Swedish text is as follows (the normal word for pancake is pannkaka so an extra syllable has crept in there too):

Nu ska här bakas pannekakas,
nu ska här vankas pannekankas,
nu ska här stekas pannekekas. (1945:14)

Hurup's version completely ignores the rhyme and the nonsense:

Here pancakes will be baked now,
here pancakes will be served now,
here pancakes will be fried now! (1954: 9)

Lamborn has:

Now we’re going to make a pancake, 
now there’s going to be a pankee, 
now we’re going to fry a pankye. (1977: 20)

We can now bring the comparison up to date by adding Nunnally's version:

Now it's time to make pancakes,
now it's time to flip panclips, 
now it's time to shape panchapes! (2007: 20)

To me, the last of these is the punchiest - Lamborn's is OK but doesn't scan so well.

From the reviews on Amazon it seems as though this version is succeeding in bringing in new readers attracted by the familiar style of the illustrations, which can only be a good thing. The physical book is also lovely and well produced. My only gripe is that the author and illustrator each get half-page biographies at the back of the book as well as name checks on the back cover and flaps. The translator, who has surely done as much as, if not more than, Lauren Child to make this book work just gets her name on the title page and the aforementioned "sparkling" in the blurb.

G is for Grimm

 Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (above, right) and Wilhelm (above, left), surely need little introduction. Their collection of German folktales in the 19th century has formed the basis of a wealth of children's literature and film around the world.

Mostly, though, we get re-tellings or adaptations of the stories. Concerns about violence and their suitability for children date right back to the first publication of Children's and Household Tales so they have been sanitised, tidied up and disneyfied many times over the years.

I wanted to re-read the original tales but my copy is 100 miles away in my parents' house. But then inspiration struck - this is the 21st century, the old translations are in the public domain, I've got an eReader... So, off I went to Project Gutenberg and hey presto, a free download of the 1884 edition, translated by Margaret Hunt and published as Grimm's Household Tales. A note before the text informs me that "Margaret Hunt's translation is very true to the German original", and on comparison with the German text of the first story The Frog King, (which is available here on wikisource.de: Der Froschkönig) it certainly is. Personally, I would prefer a slightly freer and more idiomatic translation - the use of "thou" to translate du is both archaising and distancing, for example - but then I'd have to pay for it!

This one, for instance, The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, looks lovely and I'm encouraged that the translator, Matthew R. Price, has been given space for a translator's note on the webpage as well as in the book. He says:

Taschen edition

"initially I had little sense how best to unpack these stories for today’s English-speaking readers—and listeners. I leaned on my training: countless hours of living with the language, and theatrical instincts I’d honed for years. In my mind I saw fantastic animated films as I worked through these stories. They were dark, complex, and arcing versions, not the Disney films associated with the material. There is no denying the unforgiving morality or the harshness of daily life one finds in the tales. But even more striking, finally, was the full range of emotion, especially the comedy and delight of the characters and their antics."

Source: http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/classics/all/06787/facts.the_fairy_tales_of_the_brothers_grimm.htm 

 Then there's the Vintage Classics edition, translated and with an introduction by Jack Zipes, an expert on fairytales and retired professor of German. It claims to be the only complete edition of all 279 tales - I certainly had no idea how many of them there were before I started researching this!

Now, this is a confusing one: Wordsworth Editions have three versions, including The Complete Illustrated Tales of The Brothers Grimm, apparently illustrated by Arthur Rackham (which from the cover looks frankly improbable) and containing "darker tales such as 'Death's Messengers' which deserve to be better known". The translator is uncredited, yet the cover looks sweet and childish. Then there's Grimm's Fairy Tales, selected and translated by Lucy Crane, and "illustrated throughout by Walter Crane's charming line drawings." So is the other version translated by Lucy Crane too? Who knows?

So there you are. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Or you get them for free and put up with the thees and thous.

F is for Cornelia Funke

Cornelia Funke is a hugely successful, award-winning German author of fantasy and adventure books for children of all ages - they range from picture books to young adult novels. She started out as an illustrator before beginning to write herself and became very popular in Germany in the nineties before her books began to become known in English a decade or so later. She is probably best known for the Inkworld trilogy, the first book of which, Inkheart, was also made into a 2008 film with what you might call an all-star cast.

I was just about to write that Funke is an author I hadn't previously read, when I checked her publications list and realised that fils aîné had borrowed The Princess Knight (tr. Anthea Bell, Chicken House, 2003) from the library a while ago. It's the story of the entirely non-girly Princess Violetta who wants to be a knight like her brothers and is disgusted when her father holds a tournament with her hand in marriage as the prize. With ingenuity and determination, "Little Vi" manages to outwit them all and choose her own path in life. It's also beautifully illustrated by Kerstin Meyer and a welcome antedote to all the Disney princess stuff that makes me glad to have boys!



Anyway, although I was aware of the Inkworld trilogy, I hadn't read any of Funke's fantasy novels because they came along too late for my childhood and the boys are still too young for them. In the last couple of weeks, I've read Igraine the Brave (tr. Anthea Bell, Chicken House, 2008) and Dragon Rider (tr. Anthea Bell, Chicken House, 2005) and hope that they provide a fairly representative sample of her work - I couldn't get hold of Inkheart etc in time for this project.

Igraine is another little girl who wants to be a knight. The book is for younger children, 7+ according to the publishers, and I hope it's the sort of thing fils aîné might be getting round to before long.  Her parents are famous magicians who manage to accidentally transform themselves into pigs. This means that Igraine has to put things right, meeting dragons, giants and all kinds of adventures on the way. It would be a good introduction to chapter books, chivalry, knights in armour and so on because none of the dangers ever get beyond what the film industry calls "mild peril", and it's short at 224 pages. It is also wittily told by both Funke and Bell, and illustrated by the author.



Dragon Rider, also illustrated by Funke herself, is a more ambitious undertaking altogether. Weighing in at 560 pages, it's for the 10+ age group and tells the story of a dragon named Firedrake, a brownie named Sorrel and a boy named Ben. Together they set off on an epic journey to find the long-lost valley where the last dragons can live in peace, undisturbed by human greed. Of course there are plenty of dangers to be overcome here too, and an ancient enemy is on their trail... Reading as an adult, I quite enjoyed it but felt that it lacked depth. The characters seemed rather too obvious, the dangers rather easily overcome. And I do always feel a little irritated when the journey out takes 550 pages and the return leg can be summed up in a couple of lines! Probably despite the length and the 10+ label it might be suited to a younger audience still. I can imagine that in a few years' time, the boys will love it.

Anything by Emily Gravett

My current answer when asked for picture book recommendations is "Anything by Emily Gravett," and here's why: I haven't yet come across one of her books that I haven't liked, and they're big hits with the boys too. All her books are beautiful, as befits someone who has twice won the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration, and the stories are equally charming.

Fils cadet is particularly taken with Blue Chameleon at the moment, while Fils aîné prefers Again!

Blue Chameleon is very simple and definitely more suited to younger ones, yet it has plenty to discuss on each page. It tells the story of a little chameleon looking for a friend and adapting its shape and colour to match the various objects it finds along the way - a snail, a sock and a cowboy boot, for example. As well as spotting the colours, we can discuss the way the chameleon is feeling as it gets progressively more dejected until at last it meets another chameleon and the two walk off together in a joyful explosion of colours.

Again! introduces a scenario familiar to every parent and child at bedtime. Cedric the little dragon has one favourite story, and he wants his mum to read it. And again, and again, and again! Dragons being what they are, when Cedric loses his temper, the results are startling and very funny. Fils aîné thinks so anyway, bounding around with excitement and bellowing "again!" I, on the other hand, find myself entirely in sympathy with Cedric's mum, wearily changing the story with each repetition before falling asleep herself...

Both of these are books we've had out of the library before, and have out of the library at the moment, and undoubtedly will have out of the library again in the future, given the rapture with which they were rediscovered last week. Others that I'd particularly recommend are Meerkat Mail for older children and Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear for younger ones. But like I said, anything by Emily Gravett is bound to be good!