German poem video

The International Youth Library (IYL), the world's largest library of international books for children and young adults, compiles an annual list of best children's books from around the world called the White Ravens list.The 2011 list includes 250 titles in 30 languages from 40 countries. Of these, I found 14 poetry titles-- from 12 different countries. I took pictures of each of the books and found volunteers to read selections from 7 of them for a short video. Here is a poetry book from Germany on the 2011 White Ravens list.

GERMANY
Rautenberg, Arne (text)

Teich, Karsten (illus.)

Der Wind lässt tausend Hütchen fliegen
(The wind blows a thousand little hats)

Köln: Boje, 2010. – 60 p.

(Series: Gedichte für neugierige Kinder)

ISBN 978-3-414-82237-6

Poetry – Pun

“The wind blows a thousand little hats” is Arne Rautenberg’s contribution to the Boje Press series “Poems for curious readers”, and it has made it into a no longer so well-kept “best kept secret” in the realm of children’s verse. In this latest romp, Arne Rautenberg’s rhapsodizing is a pure joy. Reflective phrases play their part, but the Dadaist wordplays are especially fun. They almost seem to call out: taste me, poke me! Juggling syllables and sounds makes language plastic – this is how poetry enchants. Karsten Teich’s illustrations are the icing on the cake; their humour surfaces in the subtle two-tone colorization characteristic of the series. (Age: 5+)

This title was particularly popular with the IYL folks (since the library is in Germany and German is the lingua franca of the library). They were eager to show me the favorite poem from this book (pictured in the page above), a terrific nonsense verse full of German wordplay. Here is one of the IYL language specialists, Ines Galling, reading that clever poem.





Image credit: SV;IYL

Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2011. All rights reserved.