Wilhelm Busch (1) (1832–1908)

Several years ago when visiting Vienna, we attended (at my insistence) a ballet based on Wilhelm Busch’s children’s classic Max and Moritz. It’s a book I grew up with and one that was read to me from an early age. We in the audience laughed heartily at Max and Moritz’s antics and even the ballet music – Rossini - was cheerful and bubbly. I turned and saw my husband and daughter seated next to me in slack-jawed shock and horror!
Max and Moritz: A Children’s Story in Seven Parts, show more was written during the mid-19th Century and is a story, told in rhyming couplets, of two boys who play tricks on various people in the community. Eventually, they get their comeuppance, much to the satisfaction of the targets of their misdeeds. Intended to be a cautionary tale about naughty or bad behavior (in the manner of another German classic: Der Struwwelpeter), both the tricks and the punishment are over-the-top. The tricks, which include an attempted drowning and explosions, are all at the expense of very proper, upstanding members of the community who are (naturally) outraged. The eventual punishment they exact is also extreme!

What is noteworthy about this book (apart from the extreme violence) is the format of the book. Max and Moritz is the pre-cursor of the comic book complete with onomatopoeia, invented language and other language devices typically used to describe the action in comics. The language is playful and intended to be an accompaniment to the illustrations. Each character is illustrated as a caricature and in fact, I’ve always thought that the boys themselves bear a striking resemblance to Laurel and Hardy.
There is no question that the humor in this book is cruel so after the performance and after re-reading the book now, I wondered why we often are inclined to laugh at cruelty. I am thinking particularly of some types of slapstick humor - the premise of which is often to laugh at the misfortunes or even (often inflicted) pain, of others. So too, some of the cartoons we grew up watching were extremely violent and in ways, similar to Max and Moritz (didn’t Wily Coyote always get his?). Maybe this kind of hyperbole serves to underscore the purpose of the violence - retribution, ignorance, disobedience, etc. Because we understand that it's not real, we can take in the lesson without being appalled. Whatever the intentions, Max and Moritz is fascinating both for its social commentary as well as its importance in the history of the development of children’s literature and the graphic novel/cartoon. show less

Please note this is a review of an uncorrected proof. I'm a big fan of fairy tales, lullabies, myths, legends.. ok you get the point. I am even more drawn to the creepy and obscure ones like the true Grimm Tales. Seeing the synopsis for this one immediately intrigued me. I visited Germany and adored their culture and history (especially the food) and just couldn't resist reviewing this original German literature in English translation.

This is exactly what dark children's humor is about. show more Mischievous children doing dastardly deeds and in the end paying in some horrendous way for what they have done. Of course many parents these days would abhor something like this for their precious little ones but as adults we can see the humor, hear the lesson and appreciate the history behind something of this nature.

I also appreciated the inclusion of the original German text and doubly enjoyed the explanation of the translation in the end. It was nice to see what went behind turning this piece into something I was able to appreciate.

Special thank you to the author, NetGalley and the Publisher for allowing me to review this for an honest review. show less

This book of poems is my first introduction to Wilhelm Busch. The poems are light-hearted and a little odd. The illustrations have the delightful, accomplished sketchiness of someone who has drawn compulsively his whole life. The sketches and poems together present an idyllic and slow-to-change view of pastoral life. Busch evidently enjoyed sketching animals. The poems were easy enough that I could read them in Frakturschrift, which gave yet another layer to my feeling that I was reading show more something from another time. show less

One of my favorite books as a child. What does that say about me?