Two Books from Scandinavia

Great Swedish Fairy Tales is a handsome well-bound book on heavy paper, with good print and wide margins, and with a wealth of exceptionally imaginative illustrations. The tales and pictures tell of legendary creatures from the evergreen forests of the north, the trolls, elves, and giants, with their very human foibles, and their contacts with princesses, princes, and all sorts of ordinary children and adults. The tales were written by nine of the best loved children's story tellers in Sweden, and were published with these same illustrations in various publications, in the early part of this century. John Bauer, who himself spent much of his childhood in and near the great forests, was a superb painter and draughtsman, as well as a man of imagination and vision, and his illustrations communicate with adults as well as children.

The stories have been translated with a fine ear for naturalness of idiomatic expression in English, as well as with a distinctive style which will help enhance a child's appreciation of good literature. It is gratifying to one who has read less successful translations in the past that Mr. Lundbergh has avoided the pitfalls of too literally translating Swedish idiomatic expressions. Over-literalness, especially in dialogue, causes characters to seem odd in ways not intended by the author, and this effect is particularly alienating to young readers, subliminally if not consciously, because they cannot relate to the characters as do native children in the original language.

At the same time that the book makes use of an extended and imaginative vocabulary, its style remains simple and uncluttered. It is readily understandable by young as well as older children in dialogue, action, and context; such a book enhances a child's ability to comprehend material that does not "talk down to him," enriching his vocabulary and enlarging his imaginative capacity. The illustrations add an ambience of mystery and wonder as well as giving form to characters and places. There is humor in the stories, too, which serves to lessen the fearsome aspect of the ill-natured trolls and giants, who are so often laughably naive and foolish in ways appreciated by children. They can usually be outsmarted, and thus the child feels a certain superiority to them. This is a book that children and parents will treasure together.

The other book, It's Raining, Said John Twaining, containing fourteen old Danish nursery and nonsense rhymes, is brightly and imaginatively illustrated on each of its 32 pages, most of the pictures full-page in size. The rhymes deal with rabbits, cats, odd doings of grownups, and princes and princesses with strange nonsense-names that are a challenge to say without a mistake. Whether these rhymes, translated and read to a child with a different folk culture and language background, will be as much enjoyed by that child as they are by children reared in the original culture and language may be questioned. Nursery rhymes often include words and nonsense syllables that simply by the juxtaposition of sounds communicate humor or other emotional qualities in the native culture. For English-speaking children, the nursery rhymes that they have learned in the English language have become already a part of their background, as they are likely to have heard them either spoken or sung from their infancy. And as this is likely to have been the case with their playmates and schoolmates as well, those rhymes become even more meaningful to them in the social context.

However, as experience has shown with some of the French and other foreign nursery songs which have become a part of our heritage, rhymes from other ethnic backgrounds can become accepted and loved here, particularly when they are sung.

Certainly, children will respond to the bright pictures and...