JAN.07.2013
My brother and I grew up on the wonderful children books by
Erich Kastner. Emil Erich Kästner , 1899
-1974, was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist, who is best known
for his humorous, socially astute poetry and children's literature.
Growing up we didn’t have many books at home, at that time
we got our books from the public library, but we did own 6 books by Erich
kastner (translated into Hebrew with the original illustrations). Emil und die Detektive, 1929; in English
Emil and the Detectives; Pünktchen und Anton, 1931; in English, Anna Louise and
Anton; Der 35. Mai, 1931; in English, The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the
South Seas; Emil und die Drei Zwillinge (Emil and the Three Twins) 1933; Das
fliegende Klassenzimmer, 1933; in English, The Flying Classroom; Das doppelte
Lottchen, 1949; in English, Lottie and Lisa.
Kastner wasn’t
only a great story teller but an
educator and a humanist. He believed that the role of literature was to delight
and instruct, he wrote to children and their parents. Yet his instruction is
never preachy; ion Pünktchen und Anton, for example, after each chapter he
turns directly to the reader (or the parents,)
wearing his writer’s hat and discusses the dilemmas and the values of the plot
and the characters. Although as a young reader I always skipped the
observations, as Kastner had predicted I
would do, as I grew older I learned to appreciate the instructive part and
started reading it very carefully.
Kastner has always been very popular in Israel, but as a
mother in the US when I was looking for the books in English they were almost
impossible to find. It took me years to find, in used books stores (even not in the library) four or five
of Kastner’s children book in English. When finally traced I was delighted to
see that my girls loved Erich
Kastner as much as I did.
In a way Kastner for
me had the similar role as the Beatles did.
I never stopped listening to them but special albums starred at
different times. It was the same with Erich Kastner’s books, I kept reading
them first as a child, later as a teen ager and also as a mother, but chose a
different book depending on the time and the mood.
Still, talking to my brother we both agreed that our
all-time favorite is The Flying Classroom, we still quote full sentences (in
Hebrew) from this book
Although written in the 1930, children and their parents In
Germany and Israel continue to enjoy Erich
Kastner , his appeal is everlasting. I
hope that those books will be reissued in the US so that American children and
their parents will finally be able to enter the delightful world of Erich
Kastner.
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