Colin Thiele
Storm Boy
Short and simple, the story is well told, everything is described very clearly:
A short book that you can read in a little over an hour, but you will still be touched by it many hours afterwards.
A little boy finds three pelican chicks whose parents were killed by hunters. He and his father raise these chicks until they can be released into the wild. But then one of the three returns and won’t leave Storm Boy’s side.
When a small ship and its crew capsize during a hurricane a few hundred meters from the seashore, the only means of rescue is the pelican …
Ages 10 and up.
GK/RK
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Erich Kästner
Dot and Anton
Original Title: Pünktchen und Anton
Luise (= Dot) is a brash, very independent, courageous girl. Now and then she is too brash = cheeky!
Dot comes from a very wealthy family and helps her friend Anton, who is having a hard time financially because of his sick mother who is unable to work.
Erich Kästner’s writing style is very lively, fresh and gives you a lot to think about.
Ages 12 and up.
RK
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Franz Werfel
Hearken Unto the Voice
(or: Listen to the Voice
or: Jeremiah)
Original Title: Höret die Stimme!
The story of the struggle, love and suffering of the prophet Jeremiah. As a reader, I continuously got the impression that the author himself had really been there 2,600 years ago, that he was present in the soul of his main character in the novel.
Franz Werfel describes external and internal events precisely and vividly: Jeremiah acts as an advisor for various kings, as an educator of the crown princes, but … at crucial moments, all of them – including the people – fail to heed his warning voice.
The first three chapters form the framework of the present day – they are a little tedious to read – and then, from chapters 4 to 33, the book takes you back one step at a time to his earlier life, where the reader hopes and suffers with this fearless person who only ever wanted to help. N.B. In the more recent editions, the first three chapters have been omitted.
A powerfully eloquent, inspiring work for those who not only want excitement, but also want to learn from the strengths and mistakes of others, which, all too often, were or still are our own.
GP
Almost all the murmurs received from above, which the prophet was allowed to announce to the kings, were unwanted messages and they were ignored. The powerful people of this world were then, as well as now, only guided by their own will (which they probably thought or think is good). In this sense, the statements made in the novel are as relevant now as they were then.
I was particularly impressed by the writer’s statement that Jeremiah had to struggle very hard not to mix together the message he received with his own when writing down the proclamations.
HRH
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Michael Morpurgo
War Horse
Millions of people were killed in the First World War and with, beside or beneath them, millions of horses, which also had to cope with machine guns, grenades, tanks and poison gas.
Representing his fellow sufferers, both two- and four-legged, the war horse Joey tells the tale of his joys and horrors.
13-year old Albert and his much-loved horse Joey grown up together on a farm in the English county of Devon. However, when the war breaks out, Albert’s father sells Joey to the cavalry.
During the four years of war in France, the horse Joey comes in contact with the British, Germans and French. On all sides there are people who try to do the horse good, those who have preserved their humanity and show a love for animals, even under extreme conditions, under the constant threat of injury, mutilation or death.
Joey initially serves as a riding horse and, as he is the speediest, he is always in the front row during attacks. When his rider, Captain Nicholls, is shot he is taken by German soldiers. Together with his friend, the strong black horse Topthorn, and Heinie, Coco and two Haflingers, they form a team that pulls heavy military equipment. Later, Joey is then used to transport the wounded.
The horse does not differentiate between nationalities, nor according to the color of the uniforms or the shape of the steel helmets, but rather based on how people treat him.
When Joey panics in a contested no man’s land between the German and British trenches, he gets himself stuck in the barbed wire. As he is lying on the ground no longer able to free himself, a German and a British soldier work together to try to free the seriously injured animal. These moments show how love for fellow creatures allows both sides to put away the deadly weapons, at least for a moment. —
Over the course of his life, Joey becomes very fond of some of “his” people: the young Albert, with whom he grows up on the farm, and Captain Nicholls, who buys him as an army horse. Then the Germans Rudi and Friedrich and the French girl Emilie and her grandfather.
The differences between his various riders are particularly well described from the horse’s point of view:
Corporal Samuel Perkins (my trainer in the army) was a hard, gritty little man, an ex-jockey whose only pleasure in life seemed to be the power he could exert over a horse… He rode hard and heavy-handed. With him the whip and the spurs were not just for show… I certainly felt for him a degree of respect, but this was based on fear and not love.
My only consolation in those early days of training were the visits of Captain Nicholls every evening in the stables. He alone seemed to have the time to come and talk to me as Albert had done before. Sitting on an upturned bucket in the corner of my stable, a sketch-book on his knees, he would draw me as he talked.
*
Trooper Warren was not a good horseman – I could tell that the minute he mounted me. He was always tense and rode heavy in the saddle like a sack of potatoes. He had neither the experience and confidence of Corporal Samuel Perkins nor the finesse and sensitivity of Captain Nicholls. He rocked unevenly in the saddle and rode me always on too tight a rein so that I was forced to toss my head continuously to loosen it. But once out of the saddle he was the gentlest of men. He was meticulous and kind in his grooming and attended at once to my frequent and painful saddle sores, chafings and windgalls to which I was particularly prone. He cared for me as no one had since I left home. Over the next few months it was his loving attention that was to keep me alive.
Military equine doctors and animal orderlies aim to save, to alleviate suffering. When Joey’s best four-legged friend Topthorn collapses due to excessive stress, the vet speaks to the officers and soldiers around him:
I told you so, they can’t do it. I see it all the time. Too much work on short rations and living out all winter. I see it all the time. A horse like this cannot stand so much. Heart failure, poor fellow. It makes me angry every time it happens. We should not treat horses like this – we treat our machines better.
To the great joy of both, childhood friends Albert and his horse Joey are reunited and remain inseparable as the two make repeated trips to the front and back to the hospital with the vetinery car.
Albert was always with me and so I was never afraid of the guns any more. Like Topthorn before him, he seemed to sense that I needed a continual reminder that he was with me and protecting me. His soft gentle voice, his songs and his whistling tunes held me steady as the shell came down.
The author succeeds in captivating readers young and old right from the first page. This book is highly recommended, and not only to horse lovers.
Ages 12 and up.
*
Filmed by director Steven Spielberg, War Horse is a movie worth watching, but the book is much better. It is precisely the scenes that have been adapted for the film that I find bothersome and implausible. If only the filmmakers had stayed closer to the content of the book and didn’t attempt to add anything unnecessary!
GK
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Tshingis Aitmatov
Jamila / Jamilia
Original Title: Джамиля
Can the feelings of love and of being in love be painted with words? Yes, Tschingis Aitmatov, who grew up in Kyrgyzstan, can. He lets his readers experience and feel how two young people of very different natures grow closer: the honest, direct village beauty Jamila and the introspective, serious, dreamy loner Daniyar. The story is told from the perspective of fifteen-year-old Said, who, like the other villagers, initially makes fun of Daniyar. Until one evening he hears him singing outdoors and realizes:
He was a man deeply in love. I felt it was not simply a love for another person, it was somehow an uncommon, expansive love for life and earth. He had kept this love within himself, in his music, in his very being. … His singing made me want to fall to the ground and kiss it, as a son to a mother, grateful that someone could love it so keenly. … I, for one, knew that in his soul Daniyar was richer than any of us.
A beautiful, noble love story, portrayed in delicate, wistful tones without exceeding the boundaries of sentimentality.
GP
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Original Title: Die Leiden des jungen Werther
Goethe’s first novel, which brought the then 25-year-old fame, describes how a young person creates his own love suffering.
The young Werther sees (Char)Lotte for the first time as she is preparing dinner for her sisters and brothers. Their mother had recently died. On her deathbed, Lotte had promised to look after her eight younger siblings and her father.
For Werther, it’s love at first sight. He is completely smitten by Lotte’s nature and appearance and in further conversations with her over the next few weeks he gets the feeling that the two of them could share similar interests.
He becomes more and more intoxicated by his feelings until the young man is all-consumed by his infatuation. At first, he rejoices to high heaven, then plunges to the depths of despair, finally he becomes obsessed with a single idea: I can’t live without her …
When he learns that she has married her fiancé Albert, he begins to believe that he can understand Lotte better than her husband, that the two are kindred souls and that he is therefore more suitable for her.
What begins as an initially pure affection turns into a boisterous “Sturm und Drang,” which degenerates into an uncontrolled desire, selfish, without any consideration for Lotte and Albert. Werther, who was initially idealistic and enthusiastic, begins to lose his grip.
The young couple tries to help their friend out of his “depression.” But Werther’s rapture of feelings, his fantasies with unbridled thoughts of jealousy and passion cause suffering and sorrows, not only for him, but also for the object of his desire.
This book is considered to be the first German-language “cult novel,” but it was also vehemently rejected by many critics. Its English and French translations were also very successful.
Though it was written over two centuries ago, the feelings and thoughts described in it are exactly the same today.
To imagine Charlotte’s noble person as you read this book is a beautiful thing. But Goethe’s precise descriptions of the inner narrative of this enraptured young man who falls into emotional misery and pathological melancholy, also make for passages that are difficult to digest. Whether you think this novel is good or not, it does not leave you feeling indifferent. Goethe vividly describes how feelings and thoughts become words and deeds, how a well-disposed person turns himself into a human catastrophe through selfish infatuation.
GK
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