The other morning on the radio I heard Andy Griffiths (popular Australian author, most well-known for The Day my Bum Went Psycho or … Butt … in the US). He was a speaker on a panel for a Deakin University debate on the topic, ‘Yes, I can’t read and write but it’s not my fault.’
Andy was talking about the books he loved as a child: Dr Seuss, Alice in Wonderland, Cole’s Funny Picture Book, and Enid Blyton’s ‘canon’. But clearly one of his very favourite books was Struwwelpeter.
Der Struwwelpeter was first published in 1845 by German author, Heinrich Hoffmann, and first published in English in 1848. The book is made up of a series of short stories, each devised to teach a lesson, and in each one a child comes to a very sticky (and frequently morbid) end. Through an adult’s eyes, it’s really very gruesome. In the story of Kaspar who did not have any Soup, a healthy, strong boy proclaims that he will no longer eat his soup, and consequently wastes away to death. In the story of Little Suck-a-Thumb, a mother warns her son not to suck his thumbs. When she goes out he continues his thumb sucking, until a tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors. Nice. And worth remembering that when written this book was intended for an audience of 3 to 6 year olds…
Andy’s memories of Struwwelpeter are of it being one he read at his grandmother’s house, and he would approach reading it with a mixture of joy and dread. He said he thought it was a great example of children’s literature because you never knew what would happen next: it could be ‘horrifying or funny or a mixture of both’. When Andy became a secondary English teacher, he realised that one of the reasons his students were not motivated to read was because they hadn’t learnt books could be fun; his students had never had the chance to meet deranged characters like those in Struwwelpeter.
Have been thinking about this since, even in relation to some of the books that Rowan loves as a toddler… more thoughts on this soon.
