Icon: enlarge
The book was illustrated by Katja Spitzer
Photo: Katja Spitzer / Mairisch Verlag
"There are important books and books that are important to you," writes Saša Stanišić on Instagram.
“This is a book that is very important to me.” Stanišić won the German Book Prize in 2019 for his novel “Ursprung”, and now he and his son Nikolai have come up with a book with stories for children.
"Hey, hey, hey, taxi!"
The stories are from four onwards, but they are not instructive, at least not in the traditional sense, they do not explain the world, they tend to confuse it.
There is a lisping dragon and a king who believes the earth is the head of a giant who walks with us through the sky, the woods, of course, that's his hair.
Brrrummm-Brrrummm-Brum-Brum-Brum
Icon: enlarge Photo: Katja Spitzer / Mairisch Verlag
Once the narrator gets into a taxi and the traffic lights are gone, instead there are green cucumbers and red tomatoes;
As a precaution, the taxi driver takes off the gas in front of a yellow pepper.
Another time the narrator opens the hood of the taxi, but there is a bed where the engine should be, with a man reading a book about cars and making car noises, Brrrummm-Brrrummm-Brrrrummm-Brum-Brum-Brum.
It's all very gaga, very surreal, but children won't be surprised, why should one wonder when the whole world feels magical when one is at an age when the answer to the question "what." is your favorite thing to do? ”,“ Nonsense ”is.
These stories are big nonsense, gravy nonsense, book award winners nonsense.
Imagination rises and roars, reason has to lag behind and with it all the laws of nature, a crazy book.
Katja Spitzer illustrated it all in a brilliant way.
Once the taxi takes the narrator into the Middle Ages, another time just quickly down to the Elbe, to a giant wave, "bigger than five hundred roofers standing on each other's shoulders," when the wave hits the bank, she takes off her foam hat and asks politely: "Excuse me, which city is that?" In the same story, the taxi turns into a submarine, as do 500 other taxis, and then 500 submarine taxis pull a pirate ship that pulls up with the giant wave Bank rode back into the Elbe.
Stories beyond routine
Icon: enlarge Photo: Katja Spitzer / Mairisch Verlag
Reading is a calming ritual that helps children bond with dad and mom.
Sometimes it's not about what is read out, but just that. And normally there is nothing to be said against it.
But this book is different.
It is a book beyond ritual, beyond routine, an exciting book.
Stanišić has no edifying messages in mind, Stanišić wants to surprise.
His goal: to encourage children to tell stories, but also adults.
"Please read my stories as loose guidelines for yours and yours," he writes in the foreword.
“Make them your own as they suit you.
Change it!
Build the variables of your world in this mine. "
Get active yourself while reading?
This can of course be found exhausting in times when you have to play the daycare and elementary school teacher in the home office anyway.
Should we now seriously also give the writer?
Those who get involved will be rewarded.
Because a world really opens up in times when so much remains closed to children in the world outside.
School of imagination
Icon: enlarge Photo: Katja Spitzer / Mairisch Verlag
Since many of the stories assume a relationship between the reader and the child, in the end there is nothing else to do.
You improvise details from the environment of your own children: What could they encounter in their district on a taxi ride?
You ask questions to the amazed audience.
Stanišić has written a children's book for all those who are not book award winners.
His book is a school of imagination.
Maybe you just have to imagine the foreword like a stage direction.
And then perform the stories like modern director's theater - as freely as possible.
Reading is traveling in the head, they say, but unfortunately reading aloud is often a rather lame thing, unwinding.
Not so with these stories: they make a writer out of dad and mom.
Icon: The mirror