Max and Moritz

by Wilhelm Busch and Wilhelm Hauff

Book Overview

A lively NEW TRANSLATION of this anarchic children's classic alongside CLASSIC ORIGINAL ARTWORK.

A nostalgia pick, 19th-Century sensibility but THE foundational classic of German children's literature. As irreverant as The Cat in the Hat, though 92 years older, and dark

Max and Moritz is perhaps the defining classic of German children's literature. In this darkly hilarious story, two young boys exercise...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1782692533
• ISBN13: 9781782692539
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: Pushkin Children's Books
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.6" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 6 to 9 years
• Grade Range: Grades 1 to 4

Customer Reviews

Great book!

This is great! I actually bought it for my husband, and didnt realise it was a language book...but its great because it helps english speakers to understand the funny german stories. It arrived quickly and in fantastic shape!

My dad's favorite book as a child

This was my dad's favorite book as a child. (To Dan, who made the comment about the Germans, my dad was a little Jewish boy in Nazi Germany and he spent 4 years in Nazi concentration camp, and this was still his favorite book that he always talked about as an adult.) Kids love horror stories. Kids love to watch gory movies. This book is the mid 19th century version of comic book horror. It's very mild in comparison to the slasher flicks most kids have seen by the age of 8. It's just very politically incorrect compared with modern PC kiddie books. Still, the original Brother's Grimm stories were much gorier. This particular version appears to have the English translation along with the original German.

A German Classic

Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) is known as the author of "Max and Moritz," but the scope of his works is much broader. He is not an author of children's books in the first place. He wrote many stories of satire and slapstick humor not primarily aimed at children, illustrated by his own drawings - for which he is justly famous. Some people even regard him as the father of the modern comic strip. Had he worked in our time, his equals would be the likes of F. K. Waechter, Tomi Ungerer, Jean-Jacques Sempé, and Ronald Searle. Although the two cannot be compared, Busch's "Max and Moritz" ranks in Germany on the same level as Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" in the English speaking world. Wherever an Englishman would quote Lewis Carroll's "Alice", a German is likely to quote Busch. Children won't catch Busch's gentle satire in "Max and Moritz." The whole concept of satire is not familiar to them, of course. But while the little ones breathlessly follow the naughty pranks, Dad smiles at the fun Busch makes of the adults in "Max and Moritz." Widow Tibbets is a good example. While professing tender feelings for her chicks, she is in reality rather practical minded. So when Max and Moritz manage to kill her chickens - and the rooster, for that matter - she grieves, but not too deeply: When the worthy Widow Tibbets (Whom the cut below exhibits) Had recovered, on the morrow, From the dreadful shock of sorrow, She (as soon as grief would let her Think) began to think 'twere better Just to take the dead, the dear ones (Who in life were walking here once), And in a still noonday hour Them, well roasted, to devour. In fact, Walter Arndt's translation in this edition is very good and captures precisely Busch's style. Let me add a word of warning to trusting parents. Busch shares the mischievous streak in Max and Moritz, and while his two young protagonists play rather violent tricks on the townspeople - a taylor almost drowns and a teacher gets his face burned from an exploding pipe - Busch himself plays the most violent trick on Max and Moritz. In their last prank they cut open the grain sacks of a farmer who finds the two boys in their hiding place, drags them to a mill and has them ground to pieces, which - Gary Larson would have loved that part - are being eaten by two of the Miller's ducks: "In with 'em!" Each wretched flopper Headlong goes into the hopper. As the farmer turns his back, he Hears the mill go "creaky! cracky!" Here you see the bits post mortem, Just as Fate was pleased to sort 'em. Master Miller's ducks with speed Gobbled up the coarse-grained feed. The good and upright people of the village are so relieved. Good riddance to Max and Moritz, they think. But of course they put that more politically correct: Through the place in short there went One wide murmur of content: "God be praised! the town is free From this great rascality!" In short: this is great stuff for the kids if you manage to explain the fine points. As a st

Max und Moritz

"Ah, the wickedness one sees or is told of such as these!" This is the story of the little boys Max and Moritz and the trouble they get into. The book is written in six languages, given consecutively paragraph by paragraph: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin. What is even more clever, all six versions rhyme! "Ay, los ninos revoltosos suelen ser los mas famosos!" To make it even better, the book is filled with black and white illustrations. It is worth it just to look at the pictures.

Morality Plays

This book is part of a genre of cautionary tales that was big in Europe, especially Germany, around the turn of the century that had its roots in fairy tales (the REAL ones, told by old wives living in dark forests, not those that were collected and sanitized by Perault, Disney, et al.) What distinguishes these stories from more traditional fairy tales is that punishment is not meted out by supernatural forces or angry Kings. Instead, the characters meet their just desserts as the result of some sort of irony. Like most books in this genre, Max and Moritz begins by accounting the cruelties committed by a couple of sociopathic children in cute rhyming verse (adding to its effect) with accompanying illustrations, then towards the end shows how their actions backfire, leading to their own horrible demise. Although these books were innocently meant to scare children into behaving, the ironic nature of the villians' demise actually suggests that they are not being punished for their actions, but are just victims of a cruel, chaotic world themselves. If only they put more thought into their cruelty, they could have gotten away with it. However, this is the reflection of an adult. As a child, this book both fascinated and scared the (...) out of me, making it far more effective than any fairy tale.This book is of particular interest because the characters of Max and Moritz are the clear inspirations behind the Katzenjammer Kids, a newspaper comic strip that was popular throughout much of the 20th century. This book is considered a classic of this genre.