Preposterous Press

The Thief Lord: Two runaways learn about life

The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke, is one of the best children’s books to come out of Germany in recent decades. Bo and Prosper, two brothers whose parents are dead, have run away to Venice. They become part of a gang of young pickpockets living in an abandoned theater, while hiding from the investigator that their aunt has hired to find them. Living on the fringes of both the tourist Venice and the sleazy Venice underworld, the boys are constantly in danger of discovery, arrest, or worse.

They gradually learn who they can trust and who is being honest with them. They also learn that, in the dingy but still appealing Venice of this book, things are often not what they seem. This is an exciting and wonderfully-written story about growing up and learning what you really want.

The Thief Lord is just one of many books by Cornelia Funke that have appeared in English. Among children’s authors who write in German, she is the best known in the English-speaking world. Her fantasy books Inkspell and Inkheart are immensely popular right now, and the third book of this trilogy should be out soon.

To see the Amazon.com page for this book, click on this link:

The Thief Lord

Why aren't there more translated children's books?

Apart from Cornelia Funke’s books, it is rare to find translations from German in the children’s section of US bookstores. And it isn’t just German: translations from other languages are just as rare. We have “Babar” and “Madeline” from French, “Pippi Longstocking” from Swedish, and very little else. Why aren’t there more?

In an article in Time Out magazine (http://www.timeoutny.com/newyork/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xyl://TONYWebArticles1/583/books/found_in_translation.xml) Michael Miller reports that only 3% of books published in the US are translations. I would not be surprised to learn that the percentage is even lower for children’s books.

In Germany, meanwhile, about a third of the roughly 5,000 children’s books published each year are translations—primarily translations of books written in English. This information comes from the German Book Office, which also published an interesting interview with Chad Post of the Dalkey Archive Press, which specializes in translations of adult literary works (http://www.gbo.org/gbo/en/index.php). Post explains that it costs around $25,000 to publish a book, and translating costs typically add $10,000 more. The average sale of literary books is around 3,500 copies; for translations (which are often avoided by reviewers) it is often closer to 2,000 copies. At that level of sales, the publisher is likely to make less than $20,000, which does not cover the costs, Post says.

If translated books lose money, on average, it’s no wonder that publishers don’t do more of them. But the publishing world is changing, and it may be possible to create a viable business based on translations. The technology of print-on-demand (which can reduce the initial capital required to publish a book), non-bookstore channels such as Amazon (which can increase the percentage of the sales price received by the publisher), and the Web as a marketing vehicle can turn what used to be a money-losing proposition into a mildly profitable one.

That, at least, is one theory. I will be testing it shortly and will let you know what I find out.

Konrad: crazy but fun

Konrad, by Christine Nostlinger (written “Nöstlinger” in her native German), is a wonderful story that explores the question of whether or not it is best to do what people expect of you.

When Mrs. Bartolotti receives a package from a mysterious factory containing a perfect 7-year-old, she doesn’t remember ordering him. Still, she and Konrad get along very well despite the fact that he is a perfect boy and she is anything but a perfect mother. Although he is too well-behaved for her wacky tastes, they quickly become very fond of each other. But trouble looms when the factory notifies Mrs. Bartolotti that Konrad was shipped to her by mistake and they want him back.

Soon, Konrad has to go into hiding as uniformed agents from the factory come to track him down. It is clear that he won’t be able to evade them for long. Something has to be done to make the factory decide they don’t want Konrad back after all. Kitty, the girl who lives in the apartment below Mrs. Bartolotti, comes up with an inspired plan.

Christine Nostlinger has written many books, and several besides Konrad are available in English.

To see this book's Amazon.com page, follow this link:

Konrad

The Neverending Story: A fantasy classic

There is no better book to begin this blog with than The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende. Since its publication in 1979, it has been translated into dozens of languages and has become a favorite of many readers around the world. Its popularity continues today.

 

The book starts out as a story-within-a-story: Bastian, a fat and lonely boy who the other kids often pick on, starts reading a strange book about the terrible problems threatening the creatures of the land of Fantastica. Bastian decides to run away, and he hides out in the attic of his school. In the book he is reading, various creatures (including a centaur, a flying dragon, and a host of others) are involved in a desperate attempt to cure their ailing empress and to rid Fantastica of a dark force that is gradually eating away its lands and its inhabitants.

 

Then, something extremely strange starts to happen. The two stories (about Bastian and about Fantastica) become oddly intertwined, and Bastian finds he has a lot to worry about beyond how to survive in the school attic.

 

Don’t be discouraged by the length of The Neverending Story (almost 400 pages). Once you get a few chapters into it, you won’t want to put it down. This book is best for readers who are 10 years old or older.

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To view the information about this book at Amazon.com, click here:

The Neverending Story

What can you expect from this blog?

There are dozens of wonderful German books for young readers. Many of the posts in this blog will be brief introductions to some of my favorites. Everyone who grows up in a German-speaking country is familiar with books by authors such as Cornelia Funke, Christine Nöstlinger, Michael Ende, Erich Kästner, and Karl May. Each of these authors has been translated into English at least once, and I will talk about many of these books. As newly translated books appear on the market, I’ll talk about them, too.

 

In addition to providing entertainment, books can also shed light on questions like “How is daily life in Germany different from life in the US?” and “What gets lost when a book is translated from one language to another?” I plan to explore those questions now and then in this blog.

 

Finally, I will occasionally talk about the world of book publishing and book selling, and about the translated books that Preposterous Press will soon begin publishing.

 

Great stories from Germany (and Austria and Switzerland)

Some great books for kids have been written in German. Many of them have been translated into English. We would like to introduce you to some of the best of these books, especially those for readers 8 to 12 years old, and that is the focus of this blog.

   There are also many wonderful books that are available only in German. It’s a shame that more of them don’t have English translations, and we at Preposterous Press will be doing our part to get some of the best ones translated and published. For the time being, though, we want to highlight those that are already available from various publishers.