Back in the 80's, I worked for a publishing company that imported a reading series from New Zealand and sold it to US schools. My job was to "Americanize" the texts, which mostly meant changing spelling and the occasional word, but it could also mean making them less violent or scary. I was told that the thinking in NZ was that books were a safer way for children to encounter hard things and work through their feelings about them than leaving them to learn about the cruelty of life through experience. Also, it acknowledges that kids do experience cruelty, and the stories give them ways to process it. I always thought that thinking made a lot of sense.
Tutu read it to Luke at a pretty early age as I recall; I'll ask him if he has any recurring nightmares from it but I suspect he enjoyed it just as much as all the Shaw kids did! Thanks for all the background info! Loved reading about it, and I would love to reread it again!
Such a fantastic post, and the family snap is gorgeous - that little dude in the shades is adorable! 🥰
My German au pair kids had the Wilhelm Busch book 'Max und Moritz' - an illustrated tale of two ne'er-do-well young lads who tore through their neighbourhood doing horrid, horrid things, until they finally got their comeuppance. M & M though were kittens in comparison to 'Struwwelpeter'. THAT book was lent to me by the family during my first week living with them (as a young-for-her age newly 18-year-old PRONE TO NIGHTMARES and away from home living in a foreign country for the first time.
It was an edition in German - I didn't understand every word at first, but it certainly made an impact on me, put it that way! 🫣🤣
Brilliant! I still have scars. She displayed that book with pride right until the end, and laughed when I insisted it wasn’t funny! (It was though, as you artfully describe.)
Oh my goodness, I remember so many of these! That boy with the thumbs - I was so scared of dressmaking scissors after that. Matilda and the fire - 'and everytime she called out 'fire!', they only answered 'little liar!'... , Augustus and the soup, and the girl with the matches! Struwwelpeter! Thank you for reminding me of this little book.
I love vintage children's books and have a number myself but they are really gentle books.
Yes, you are right - fairytales were brutal. They spring from tales of the mythical and legendary and were told for exactly the purpose that Strewelpeter was written.
I have an encyclopedia, https://www.amazon.com.au/Spirits-Fairies-Gnomes-Goblins-Hb/dp/0874368111 and when one reads exactly what the legendary creatures did, it's horrifying. But then of course, some are quite seelie - gentle - and for a small price (porridge, a set of clothes) will treat one well.
But back to books - I think in our day, we knew the tales WERE legend and myth and so it was possible to accept the 'cautionary' instruction without having a breakdown. These days, so many stories, Young Adult in particular, are depressing, real and give no reader a chance to escape from life. Ultimately, is it any wonder that kids move onto alcohol, drugs, self-abuse? Anything to shut off reality. Maybe fantasy and fairytale does have its place...
This sounded SO familiar -- One of my favorite childhood poetry collections (that I still have & still read to my son) is Beastly Boys & Ghastly Girls (1964) and I just checked - it includes Hoffman’s “Slovenly Peter” and the story of “Augustus” who wouldn’t eat his soup, and another by him about Johnny Head-in-the-air who fell in the river because he never watched where he was going. I love these kinds of tales, and as a kid I doubly loved them!
I too have an old battered copy of "The Golden Story Book" full of beautiful Arthur Rackham-style drawings that I loved BUT it also included a few of the (very terrifying to me) Heinrich Hoffmann poems. I found this post especially intriguing because I wrote about poor Augustus and that awful Scissor Man on my own blog a number of years ago. I do believe that the British illustrations of the Scissor Man are much more sinister! Have a looksee if you like and love your substack! https://www.speranzanow.com/?p=402
This brought back such fun memories of ... one of my kids... memorizing the poem about Augustus and the soup. Such a hoot! Like Gorey but jollier.
Back in the 80's, I worked for a publishing company that imported a reading series from New Zealand and sold it to US schools. My job was to "Americanize" the texts, which mostly meant changing spelling and the occasional word, but it could also mean making them less violent or scary. I was told that the thinking in NZ was that books were a safer way for children to encounter hard things and work through their feelings about them than leaving them to learn about the cruelty of life through experience. Also, it acknowledges that kids do experience cruelty, and the stories give them ways to process it. I always thought that thinking made a lot of sense.
Tutu read it to Luke at a pretty early age as I recall; I'll ask him if he has any recurring nightmares from it but I suspect he enjoyed it just as much as all the Shaw kids did! Thanks for all the background info! Loved reading about it, and I would love to reread it again!
Such a fantastic post, and the family snap is gorgeous - that little dude in the shades is adorable! 🥰
My German au pair kids had the Wilhelm Busch book 'Max und Moritz' - an illustrated tale of two ne'er-do-well young lads who tore through their neighbourhood doing horrid, horrid things, until they finally got their comeuppance. M & M though were kittens in comparison to 'Struwwelpeter'. THAT book was lent to me by the family during my first week living with them (as a young-for-her age newly 18-year-old PRONE TO NIGHTMARES and away from home living in a foreign country for the first time.
It was an edition in German - I didn't understand every word at first, but it certainly made an impact on me, put it that way! 🫣🤣
Brilliant! I still have scars. She displayed that book with pride right until the end, and laughed when I insisted it wasn’t funny! (It was though, as you artfully describe.)
Oh my goodness, I remember so many of these! That boy with the thumbs - I was so scared of dressmaking scissors after that. Matilda and the fire - 'and everytime she called out 'fire!', they only answered 'little liar!'... , Augustus and the soup, and the girl with the matches! Struwwelpeter! Thank you for reminding me of this little book.
Loved your piece, Elizabeth! All very familiar to my childhood, in the fifties, in Brazil. Adorable and scary, and very much life like!
I love vintage children's books and have a number myself but they are really gentle books.
Yes, you are right - fairytales were brutal. They spring from tales of the mythical and legendary and were told for exactly the purpose that Strewelpeter was written.
I have an encyclopedia, https://www.amazon.com.au/Spirits-Fairies-Gnomes-Goblins-Hb/dp/0874368111 and when one reads exactly what the legendary creatures did, it's horrifying. But then of course, some are quite seelie - gentle - and for a small price (porridge, a set of clothes) will treat one well.
But back to books - I think in our day, we knew the tales WERE legend and myth and so it was possible to accept the 'cautionary' instruction without having a breakdown. These days, so many stories, Young Adult in particular, are depressing, real and give no reader a chance to escape from life. Ultimately, is it any wonder that kids move onto alcohol, drugs, self-abuse? Anything to shut off reality. Maybe fantasy and fairytale does have its place...
This sounded SO familiar -- One of my favorite childhood poetry collections (that I still have & still read to my son) is Beastly Boys & Ghastly Girls (1964) and I just checked - it includes Hoffman’s “Slovenly Peter” and the story of “Augustus” who wouldn’t eat his soup, and another by him about Johnny Head-in-the-air who fell in the river because he never watched where he was going. I love these kinds of tales, and as a kid I doubly loved them!
I too have an old battered copy of "The Golden Story Book" full of beautiful Arthur Rackham-style drawings that I loved BUT it also included a few of the (very terrifying to me) Heinrich Hoffmann poems. I found this post especially intriguing because I wrote about poor Augustus and that awful Scissor Man on my own blog a number of years ago. I do believe that the British illustrations of the Scissor Man are much more sinister! Have a looksee if you like and love your substack! https://www.speranzanow.com/?p=402