Klingt meine Linde

by Astrid Lindgren

From the creator of Pippi Longstocking comes this extraordinary story of hope and redemption. Orphans Matthew and Anna's lives are full of hardships - until a red bird leads them to a magical world.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: 3789160369
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Oetinger
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Very sad, but very moving

This book is by the author of Pippi Longstocking, but it is nothing like the Pippi books except in that it focuses on children and the importance of play and freedom in childrens' lives. While Pippi had an unlimited amount of both, Matthew and Anna have none. They are oprhans who are taken in to live with a farmer who doesn't care for them but uses them as farm labor and barely feeds or clothes them enough for their survival. The world is bleak to these children, both in the illustrations and in their own descriptions it is colorless, "as gray as mice", until they discover a magical bird and a magical door that takes them to a children's paradise where they can play and be cared for as much as they want and need. I choked up and almost couldn't finish reading this book the first time I read it aloud to my children. It IS a VERY sad book, to be sure, and it is NOT a bedtime story or a fun, casual read. It is a deeply serious and moving story that will remind the adult reader of the classic story of The Little Match Girl, except that in The Red Bird the story does not imply that the children die. A child's view will be that they simply stayed in a magical world, while anyone acquainted with The Little Match Girl story will see the parallels quite clearly. It would make a good discussion book to read alongside The Little Match Girl as well as in any discussion of global poverty and how it affects children. (Two days before reading this my oldest daughter watched a news story about children freezing and starving to death in the mountains of Pakistan in earthquake-ravaged villages and it was a timely discussion for us.) But it is certainly necessary to assess your child's age and emotional maturity before considering reading this book. Because of the extremely serious subject matter (including some of Anna's comments about expecting to die, and later wanting to die) as well as the length of the book, I'd say the 4-8 age range given for this book is too low, and it is more appropriate for something like 6-10, again depending on maturity.