Posted by Colin Turner on April 18, 2001 at 00:48:07 from 195.147.220.19:
On Easter Sunday BBC Radio 4 broadcast the first of a new 15 minute series called "Shaking up the Library" in which Michael Rosen looks at ground-breaking children's books and their authors. The first programme looked at Erich Kastner's "Emil and the Detectives", the first crime novel written specifically for and about children, how the English translation toned down the original's racy language and how it spawned a literary genre which included Enid Blyton's "Famous Five"
The relevance to TARs? Apart from a passing reference to AR's characters doing a spot of "sleuthing" - an allusion to Big Six(?) - I was interested by the claim made by one of the contributors that it would be impossible to publish a new novel like "Emil" today.
The reason given was that today's children are so carefully protected by adults that no publisher would consider taking a novel in which children had adventures that involved staying out all night and taking events into their own hands. The speaker went on to say that, starting with Kastner, there was a window, now closed, of about 50 years in which novels of this sort were acceptable to the public. If so, AR's novels really are a monument to a closed chapter in children's literature.
The programme left me wondering whether "Emil" (pub 1927), might have influenced AR to build a crime and detection theme into his first novel, SA.
Rosen also described how Kastner's books were burned by the Nazis, implying misleadlingly, that "Emil" was among them. (Though I seem to remember that "The Flying Classroom" was intended as an anti-Nazi allegory).
Does anyone know whether there were German translations of AR's pre-war novels and, if so, what was the official attitude towards them? I would have thought Goebbels et al would have found AR's themes of outdoor adventure, seamanship, woodcraft, self-reliance, initiative etc thoroughly wholesome.
Anyway, I can recommend "Shaking up the Library" to anyone with an interest in children's literature. The subject of the next programme is Eve Garnett's "Family from One End Street" and it's on Sunday 22nd at 7.45
There is a little about Kastner and his children's books at these two sites
http://www.ricochet-jeunes.org/eng/biblio/author/kastner.html
http://www.tamabi.ac.jp/wsc/english/mc/default.htm
Colin Turner