Nanette Newman

What Will You Be, Grandma

Nanette Newman

In my opinion, this is a fantastic book to read. I liked the book for three reasons. First of all, the book pushes the reader to wonder what he or she will become when growing up. Throughout the text, Lily creates various scenarios of what her grandmother could become when she grows older. She tells her grandmother, “you could grow wings and fly around the world, making sure people are nice to their cats and dogs like I am.” Through statements like this, children will begin to wonder what talents they possess and how they could use them to pick a career in order to help others in need. Second, the soft, pastel illustrations in the book enhance the comprehension of the story. To demonstrate this, as Lily claims ,“...or you could grow up to be a fairy with a magic wand who stops rooms from getting messy”, there is a picture of Lily’s grandmother dressed like a fairy using a magical wand that picks up toys and clothes to clean rooms. The pictures depict what is occurring in the text and help support what is being said. Third, the plot of the book is organized and easy to follow. The book begins by Lily asking, “What do you think you’ll be when you grow up?”, continues with imagining possible careers including “…a lady who makes lollipops and gives them away to children…”, and ends with the grandmother saying,“I’d like to be a lady with a little granddaughter named Lily who she loves from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.” The sequential order of events in the story guides the reader to understand the text in an efficient manner and process what occurred. Overall, the main idea of the book is to be who you are as an individual rather than trying to be something or someone else that you’re not. It is better to be yourself because you are unique and possess special powers and talents that others do not have.… (lisätietoja)

The Root Children, retold by Nanette Newman, with original artwork by Sibylle von Olfers.

English actress and author Nanette Newman presents a translation of Sibylle von Olfers' classic 1906 poem about Mother Nature and her little Root Children in this lovely picture-book, which boasts the original Art Nouveau illustrations done by von Olfers to accompany her tale. "The world is asleep, / The trees are still bare, / But Earth Mother calls / To her children there: / It soon will be Spring, / There's no time to waste, / So wake up, wake up, / Come on now, make haste!," the book begins, following the eponymous Root Children as they make new clothes for themselves, and for the beetles, before emerging into the fresh Spring world. Here they enjoy the beauties of the season, which stretches into Summer. But when Autumn comes, they are called home by the Earth Mother, and sent to bed until the next spring...

Published in 1978 in London, this English translation of Etwas von den Wurzelkindern is the sixth version of this tale that I have encountered. There is the original German version of course, first published in 1906 and featuring Sibylle von Olfers' own rhyming text and Jugendstil artwork. There is the prose adaptation published in 1941 (reprinted 1988) by the American author Helen Dean Fish, When the Root Children Wake Up, which features a significantly revised text, together with the original artwork by von Olfers. There is the loose prose adaptation done by Edinburgh-based Floris Books in 1990 (reprinted 1998), The Story of the Root Children, paired again with the original von Olfers artwork. There is the even looser prose adaptation done by Audrey Wood in 1995, also entitled When the Root Children Wake Up, which features neither the original story, nor its original artwork. And finally, there is the verse translation of von Olfers' original poem done in 2007 by Jack Zipes, Mother Earth and Her Children, paired with the artwork of Sieglinde Schoen-Smith, who reproduced von Olfers' original illustrations in quilt form.

It's interesting to me that the blurb on the back of The Root Children makes the claim that it represents the first published version of this story in English. Obviously the editors were unfamiliar with the Helen Dean Fish volume, published more than thirty years before. It does represent the first appearance of von Olfers' story in verse form in English, however, and is far more faithful to the original than the subsequent Floris Books edition, currently in print. I wish I had the Zipes to hand, in order to compare the two poetic translations, but alas I do not. Comparing Nanette Newman's work to the original (or rather, to the bits of it I retain in my notes), however, I see that liberties have been taken with the German text, but that the general form and content of the poem is fairly well reproduced. This is an adaptation as much as translation, but that was necessitated, I imagine, by the rhyming form. However that may be, this is a pleasant version of this classic German children's tale. I would rank it together with the Zipes' translation, as one of the better versions available in English. It's long out-of-print, of course, so I'm not sure anyone but a dedicated comparative translations/adaptation nut (like myself) would want to hunt it down...… (lisätietoja)