Beyond Babar: The European Tradition in Children's Literature (review)

According to Sandra Beckett, this collection of critical essays on European children's literature had originally been conceived as a volume on the best international children's books and a companion volume to the three volumes of Touchstones: Reflections of the Best in Children's Literature, edited by Perry Nodelman and published by the Children's Literature Association between 1985 and 1989, which focused on works written in English. This global perspective, however, has been impeded by the fact that many deserving non-European works have not been translated into English, which, according to Beckett, "made it impossible to compile a truly representative international volume."

Beyond Babar: The European Tradition in Children's Literature does not pretend to offer a comprehensive overview of the best of European children's literature not originally written in English. Instead, this collection of critical essays aims to give readers an in-depth analysis of eleven of the most celebrated European children's novels of the twentieth century. Overall, the essays are very well—some beautifully—written and insightful, providing the reader with a thorough, stimulating analysis of both texts and contexts. As one can expect from such a collection, the essays vary in approach, length, and substance. Taken together, however, they provide readers not only with rich analyses of eleven ground-breaking European novels, most written in the latter part of the twentieth century, they also provide insights into the characteristic features of twentieth-century European children's literature.

Selecting only children's books in English translation imposed considerable restraints on the editors. Exacerbating the matter are the bad translations, low-budget marketing, and an innate resistance to foreign books from readers and mediators. It is no surprise that many translated books go out of print quickly in the United States. Such has been the fate of many of the titles selected for this volume as well, including Christine Nöstlinger's Konrad; Michael Tournier's Friday and Robinson; Gianni Rodari's The Befana's Workshop; Peter Pohl's Johnny, My Friend; and Cecil Bødker's Silas and the Black Mare—all of which are available only in very limited quantities (if at all) through Amazon. In fact, of the books Beckett and Nikolajeva have selected, only The Little Prince, Pippi Longstocking, and Tove Jansson's Moomin books are widely available for purchase on the U.S. market. The sad fact remains: translation does not necessarily equate with availability.

Besides the books' availability in English, the selection criteria included the novels' literary quality, their importance, distinctiveness, and popularity. Not surprisingly, five of the nine authors represented in Beyond Babar received the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award. Still, some readers may wonder why Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (Sweden) or Erich Kästner's Emil und die Detektive (Germany) were not included. Nor were Maria Gripe's Elvis Karlsson (Sweden, republished in paperback in the United States in 1997) nor the novels by the Dutch author Annie M.G. Schmidt and the Norwegian Tormod Haugen, all Hans Christian Andersen Medalists. And Spain, Greece, and the smaller central European countries are not mentioned. Such gaps show the need for another volume on European children's literature.

The collection, which is arranged chronologically, opens with Lilia Ratcheva-Stratieva's fine essay by about the troubling fate of King Matt I and his creator. While Ratcheva-Stratieva also presents Janusz Korczak's novel, King Matt I, in its literary context, the main foci of her analysis are the novel's didactic elements and its social criticism, which were closest to the author's heart. The tragic undertones that can be found in this novel permeate many of the novels included in this volume.

But King Matt I also prepares the ground for the colorful cavalcade of characters that surround King Matt I on the cover of the collection: The Little Prince, Pippi Longstocking, Moomintroll, the blue toy train from Gianni Rodari...