This review is reprinted from Green Man Review.
Quick — can you name a dozen children’s novels originally written in languages other than English?
If you can get further than Pinocchio, Heidi, and The Little Prince, you’re doing exceptionally well. If you come up with any novels from non-European languages, you’re a real expert. Very few translations of children’s books make it onto British and American bookshelves, and hardly any of those are from outside Europe. There is a corresponding lack of critical consideration of this literature, which the editors of Beyond Babar are determined to remedy.
The title they have chosen is something of a misnomer, as they focus exclusively on longer works, not picture books like Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar and its sequels. The subtitle, too, is a bit misleading. Rather than surveying a historical tradition in European children’s literature, they have selected eleven important books published in the twentieth century, nearly all after 1940. Far from being blandly traditional, these are groundbreaking, thought-provoking and often subversive works of art.
To be included, all of the books must have been translated into English, and with one exception, Carlo Rodari’s The Befana’s Toyshop, all are still in print. Each book is covered in an essay by one of an international array of scholars, who strive to bring appreciation and understanding into this neglected corner of the literary world.
Each essay includes a summary of its subject and some biographical information about the author, and then focuses on some particular problem or quirk of the novel concerned. Many of the authors use this as a forum to question the distinction between “children’s” and “adult” literature: Janusz Korczak’s political fable King Matt the First has an unusual unhappy ending; Cecil Bodker’s Silas and the Black Mare is the first book in a long “suite” that evolves into an Oedipal epic; Michel Tournier’s Friday and Robinson (originally a longer novel published for adults as Friday) includes scenes of Friday’s “intimate relationship” with a she-goat. Others highlight the subversive element in their subjects. Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, in which Pippi provides a gloriously, impossibly self-sufficient antidote to the humdrum lives of two ordinary children, is one example. Konrad by Christine Nostlinger, in which a “perfect,” factory-made boy is delivered to the home of a decidedly imperfect single mother, is another. The Befana’s Toyshop is openly Marxist in theme; Tove Jansson’s surreal Moomin novels gradually lead their characters and the reader out of the world of childhood.
Besides the works cited above, the eleven essays include pieces on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, Peter Pohl’s Johnny My Friend, and Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World. All are well worthy of consideration as important and distinctive works of literature in their various languages. There is a strong Northern European representation here, with no less than five of the authors writing in Scandinavian languages (three of those in Swedish) and two in German. Of the remaining books, two were originally published in French, one in Polish, and one in Italian.
A final essay by Maria Nikolajeva considers the difficulties of translating children’s books in a way that preserves their literary integrity while ensuring that children will actually read them. Unfortunately, while some books receive a respectful treatment from top-notch translators (like Ralph Manheim’s work on The Neverending Story, for example), others are victims of bowdlerization (Konrad, whose unconventional surrogate mother is toned down considerably) or of just not trying very hard (Pippi Longstocking, whose exuberant wordplay is not carried over into the English version).
Obviously, to really appreciate these books one would have to read them in the original languages; since few of us can do so, the authors and editors of Beyond Babar have done us a great service in bringing at least some of their manifold qualities to our attention. Beyond Babar is meant to be used as a text in college courses in children’s literature, but with its thoughtful, engaging essays, blessedly free of academic jargon, it should have an appeal far beyond that.
(Children’s Literature Association and Scarecrow Press, 2006)
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