Michael Ende (1929–1995)

A lot of people are preoccupied with time: How it should be spent, how it can be saved, and how to make sure it isn't wasted. Have you ever accused someone of stealing your time? Momo is the only person who is able to resist the allure of the grey men who are time thieves. An already unique child, Momo, is abandoned by all of her friends who have fallen prey to these menaces (and they really do sound menacing + the illustrations are delightfully creepy). Much like The Neverending Story, the show more city that Michael Ende has created feels tangible and real...actually it sounds like Rome. The characters leap off of the page. Fantasy is done right when your imagination is allowed to run rampant and a talking turtle is as ordinary as a gorilla that learns sign language (I still think that's amazing). Momo is all about making the most of your time by spending it with those that you love. I think this is an especially poignant message for adults who are bombarded with deadlines and to-do lists and children who often feel neglected by those same adults. The message is clear but the delivery is what makes Ende's writing so special and why I believe he is an underrated children's author in our country (but not in his home country of Germany!). show less

I have actually never written a review for Michael Ende's utterly amazing [b:The Neverending Story|27712|The Neverending Story|Michael Ende|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327871159s/27712.jpg|1122661] (I have also never read it in English). I first read it in German in the early 80s, I believe, and I have reread it regularly over the years. [b:Die unendliche Geschichte|1124692|Die unendliche Geschichte|Michael Ende|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181189349s/1124692.jpg|1122661] is one show more of my all-time favourite German children's literature books; I simply adore it.

I love everything about this book, including the ingenious way the chapters are arranged, as well as the different colour fonts (red for reality, blue for Fantastica, or Phantásien in German). For me, the different fonts are not only an ingenious plot and narrative device, they also represent the separation of fantasy and reality. However, the fantastical first letters of each of the 26 chapters, representing the 26 letters of the alphabet, are all (at least in my own copy of the book) presented in the same reddish font as the parts of the story that take place in the real world (even for those chapters based wholly and entirely in Fantastica); this shows on a visual level that while fantasy and reality might be separate and different from one another, they are nevertheless linked.

I remember when we were reading [b:Neverending Story|1094741|Neverending Story|Michael Ende|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180927688s/1094741.jpg|1122661] in the Children's Literature Group, one of my GR friends (Kirei) asked if the story actually did end. I have to admit that when I first read the novel as a teenager, I kept looking for other novels by the Michael Ende about Fantastica, as he was always hinting at precisely that eventuality (but, that is another story ...), until I finally realised that this was a plot device. At first, this bothered me a bit (I felt a bit cheated). But then, I realised how ingenious this particular plot device was (and is). It solidifies Michael Ende's belief that every book is a neverending story, and that books engender other stories and so on and so on. Furthermore, for someone who easily becomes nervous when reading exciting or frightening tales, the fact that the author claims that there will be more (future) tales of Fantastica, gives a reassurance that Fantastica will survive, that the nothing (the emptiness) will not succeed in destroying fantasy and the realms of fantasy.

In the first part of the novel, the main emphasis seems to be on the importance of fantasy and how the lack thereof is detrimental to not only the realms of Fantastica, but to the real world as well. While the story is not openly didactic, it does possess an obvious message against pure materialism and the disallowance and discrediting of fantasy. The childlike empress will succumb to her illness and with her all of Fantastica, unless a human being can enter Fantastica and give the empress a new name (humans used to regularly find their way to the realm, but they are seemingly losing this ability, or are unwilling to make use of it). And while Bastian does, in fact, possess fantasy and imagination, he is at first too unsure of himself to give the empress the name he has created for her (moon child). Indeed, the empress must resort to tricks and subterfuge in order to persuade Bastian to finally utter her name, to stop the nothing and to become part of the world of Fantastica.

In the second part of the story, Bastian is then given the opportunity to use the power of his own imagination (his own wishes and desires) to reconstruct Fantastica. At first, it seems that there are no limits imposed. In fact, the empress tells Bastian that he should do what he wishes, what he wants. There are internal limits though, namely that Bastian's main responsibility, his main goal is to find the nature of his one true (his dearest) wish (which is something that Bastian only learns bit by bit). It becomes obvious that Bastian's desires to be strong and courageous, of wanting to change his outward appearance are not only not his actual, true wishes, they portray that Bastian, at this time, only uses his imagination and fantasy as an escape from a world that he does not like very much, a world where he can neither love nor be and feel loved. Bastian does not merely reconstruct Fantastica by creating new realms of fantasy, he uses these to escape from both reality and his own personality. In fact, Bastian becomes quite dictatorial, attempting to usurp power from the childlike empress. Luckily for him, this proves unsuccessful, and faced with the loss of his memories, Bastian finally realises that his dearest wish is to love himself, to be able to love, that without love, there is nothing.

[b:The Neverending Story|27712|The Neverending Story|Michael Ende|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327871159s/27712.jpg|1122661] demonstrates how the interaction and interplay of fantasy and reality, of Fantastica and humanity only succeeds if one strives to use fantasy and imagination to improve reality, and that because Bastian is unable to love either the world or himself, he uses fantasy not to improve reality, but to escape from it. This causes him to almost become permanently stranded in Fantastica, which might at first not seem such a bad possibility, except that, becoming stranded in Fantastica also means losing ones memories, losing ones soul and sanity. In the end, it is almost too late for Bastian, and basically, even though he has realised what his greatest wish is (love), it is only Atreju's friendship which allows Bastian to regain all of his memories and be allowed to return to the real world. Atreju takes over the responsibility of finishing all of the stories that had been started by Bastian, and it is this which frees Bastian, allowing his return. And with Bastian's return, we also notice that Bastian has not only learned how to love, and allowed his father to love again, he has also learned to take responsibility for his actions. He, himself, goes to Mr. Coreander to tell him about taking the book, he does not rely on his father to do this (although his father does offer). The main point of [b:The Neverending Story|27712|The Neverending Story|Michael Ende|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327871159s/27712.jpg|1122661], at least for me, is that imagination and fantasy are essential for life and happiness, but that they must also not be used to simply escape from reality, from the world. They are to be used as a tool, an enjoyable tool, but simply a tool nevertheless, as a method of allowing fantasy and reality to exist together in harmony. show less

Come along with Momo, her dear friends Beppo and Guido, the enigmatic Professor Hora, and his wise turtle companion Cassiopeia, as they join forces to face a menace that's difficult to see and even more difficult to stop.

One of the book's central themes is time. Or rather how we choose to spend the time we have. The character Momo is a humble orphan girl who has a rare talent for patience and listening, and the townsfolk soon learn that if they take the time to share their problems with her, show more they gain new insight as a result of her attentiveness. In contrast, her adversaries (and really, everyone's adversaries) are the men in gray who steal and thrive on the misspent time of daily living. If you find yourself too hurried to stop and smell the flowers, that's a sign these monochrome miscreants are at work.

This was my first look at the writing of the late German author Michael Ende, and now I intend to follow up with more of his books. Next up, The Neverending Story. show less

This is a special book. Momo is an orphan living in an ancient, abandoned amphitheatre. She has one special power. It's nothing you'd expect of a superhero, but in this story it makes all the difference. There is a strong dividing line between stories with events tossed in just to propel it forward, and stories built like carefully constructed edifices or arguments with nothing extraneous and an important meaning behind everything that occurs. This has the feeling of the latter. Even as Momo show more and her friends are engaged in the imaginative voyage of the Ajax, an entire chapter of make-believe, I did not doubt that Michael Ende included even that scene with a distinct purpose in mind. Comparisons with 'The Neverending Story' are inevitable. This is not as complex as the other but maybe just as challenging, and lessons abound.

Michael Ende is fearlessly subtle. He can say the deepest things in the simplest words, and not worry overmuch whether you're grasping their meaning. With lines like, "There are treasures capable of destroying those who have no one to share them with" scattered within a straightforward story for children, an adult also has something to chew on. It is a story at least partially about the importance of taking the time - stealing time, we sometimes say - to appreciate one another in a world that is always madly rushing forward. The grey men may not be real to us in a literal sense, but in the form of time-consuming, time-wasting things we do that make us wonder why there aren't enough hours in a day. The trick is not to confuse time-wasting with enjoyable time well spent. Like when someone my age sets aside studying the French Revolution to spend a few minutes with this. show less