Der Struwwelpeter

This morning I found Tadzio in his room trying to wedge a key into the electrical socket. Observing him, I reflected on how I used to do the same thing as a child, and how scary and exciting the electrical shock feels when it runs up your fingers. I hastily interrupted his work and we had a long talk about how nous ne jouons pas avec l'électricité! In the end we hugged and he agreed not to play with the electrical socket, and asked if it was okay if he jammed the key into the phone outlet instead?

All of this made me think of Der Struwwelpeter, the famous book by the German psychologist Heinrich Hoffman. Various people have written about this book over the years and in 2006 it was reinterpreted and illustrated as Struwwelpeter and Other Disturbing Tales for Human Beings. Nothing is quite as terrorizing as the original stories, however, where mischievous actions have disastrous consequences.

The title story, Struwwelpeter, describes a boy who does not groom himself properly and is consequently unpopular. In "The Very Sad Story of the Matches" a girl plays with matches and burns to death. In "The Story of Thumb-Sucker", a mother warns her son not to suck his thumbs. However, when she goes out of the house he resumes his thumb sucking, until a roving tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors. The Story of Soup-Kaspar begins as Kaspar, a healthy, strong boy, proclaims that he will no longer eat his soup. Over the next five days he wastes away and dies.

My own personal favorite is "The Story of Flying Robert." In the story, a boy goes outside during a storm. The wind catches his umbrella and sends him to places unknown, and presumably to his doom.

I'm not sure how Tadzio would feel about this book. He tends to be a worrier, like his parents.