Running Risks with Language: Contemporary Prose and Poetry for Children in West Germany

During the last fifteen years in West Germany there has been a remarkable development of experimental children's literature. Whereas German writers had shied away from dealing with thorny problems of childhood experience in the immediate postwar period, they rose to the forefront of a general European reform movement in the late 1960s that sought to make children's literature socially more realistic and emancipatory at the same time (see my essay in Children's Literature, 5 [1976]). It is difficult for an English-reading public to obtain translated texts of this new German children's literature, so that the special issue of Dimension, edited by Karlhans Frank and containing stories and poems, fills a need by helping us to gain a sense of the experimentation in West Germany. Frank's anthology is the first to appear in English with the German originals on the opposite pages.

Frank is a gifted writer of children's books in his own right. Since 1968 he has produced numerous volumes of poetry and prose for children, written television scripts for children's shows, and developed four "Sesame Street" paperbacks for educators. His most recent children's book is Was macht der Clown im ganzen Jahr? (What Does the Clown Do All Year Long?), published in 1978. Here, as the guest editor of this thematic issue of Dimension, he has gathered together approximately twenty-two texts in prose and poetry—along with several unique illustrations—for children between the ages of six and fourteen. He does not presume or want to pretend that this is a "representative" volume of the best texts for children by West German authors; rather, he has made a careful and sensitive selection of provocative stories and poems that challenge young readers' minds. All of them are admirably translated by different persons under the guidance of A. Leslie Willson, the general editor.

To begin, the thematic issue of Dimension is introduced by Ruth Lorbe's insightful essay on West German poetry for children. Lorbe presents several interesting examples of recent experimentation with motifs, rhymes, sounds, and structure to indicate how poems can make the young reader "aware of all the possibilities that lie in the language, and . . . invite him to have confidence in the language, to run risks with language." This sets the tone for the rest of the volume, for Frank has collected stories and poems that reflect how the authors themselves run risks with language and how young readers can follow these risks. In the course of reading all the texts, one learns not only about artistic endeavors on behalf of children in West Germany but also about social conditions in the Federal Republic.

Since it would be difficult to summarize all the fine contributions to this volume, I want to cite some of the more interesting concerns of the authors and the expressive forms that they have developed. Three stories—Gina Ruck-Pauquet's "Red Man and Red Girl," Iring Fetscher's "The Frog Prince—How It Continued," and Gunter Herburger's "The Cement Dwarf"—exemplify the ways in which numerous West German authors have reutilized fairy-tale motifs to question the irrational and unjust conditions in modern society. Frank's own contribution, "The Really Sad Story of the Smart Pig," borders on the fairy-tale genre, but it is more a short fantastic and symbolic speculation about the nature of oppressed creatures. On the realistic side, there are penetrating sketches of family and social life in the Federal Republic—all drawn with a sympathetic eye for the difficult situation of youngsters. Hans Christian Kirsch's "Quarreling" is a sensitive portrayal of a brother and sister who develop stronger bonds of love while observing how the relationship between their parents becomes more bitter. Wolfgang Fienhold's story, "Fatso," deals poignantly with unwarranted prejudice against odd-looking children. Carola Benninghoven's "Ilona Doesn't Go Home at Noon" allows readers to gain insight into the sufferings of a child who is neglected by her [End Page 192...