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Santa — and Shock-Headed Peter — Know Who’s Naughty

(ARA) — “Shock-Headed Peter” (also known as “Slovenly Peter” in English-speaking countries) is a Victorian-era collection of sometimes ghastly, always gleefully macabre cautionary tales that has been the secret delight of children and adults for over a century and a half. Perhaps the best-known German children’s book, Shock-Headed Peter includes the stories of Cruel Frederick (dog abuser “bites” the dust), Harriet and the Matches (cat duo predicts pyromaniac girl’s demise), and Little Suck-A-Thumb (tailor with scissors — enough said).

The book, Der Struwwelpeter in German, written by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann, was first published in Frankfurt in 1845 and has been popular ever since. These “merry stories and funny pictures for children between 3 and 6 years old,” as Hoffmann termed them, are cautionary tales — by turns macabre, touching, and wickedly funny.

Hoffmann wrote the book as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son, intending it as a commentary on the moralizing prevalent in the children’s stories of the 19th century. In his own words: “Towards Christmas, when my eldest son was three years old, I went to town with the intention to buy as a present for him a picture book, which should be adapted to the little fellow’s powers of comprehension. But what did I find? Long tales, stupid stories, beginning and ending with admonitions like ‘the good child must be truthful’ or ‘children must keep clean,’ etc.”

Hoffmann decided he could write a better book, and Der Struwwelpeter was the result. It has spawned dozens of translations as well as literally hundreds of imitations, adaptations, take-offs, and parodies. Mark Twain is among the more famous translators (his version may be read at www.fln.vcu.edu//struwwel/peter_dual.html). A popular play based on Shock-Headed Peter has played to great acclaim in London, New York, Washington, D.C. — including the Eisenhower Theater of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — and Chicago.

The tales of Peter and the other children in the book may remind readers of the rather grisly narratives in the unexpurgated Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Right and Wrong are clearly delineated, and justice is swift and sure. While today’s parents may find the stories too intense for young children, the book makes a wonderful gift for older children, as well as adults who daydream about people getting their just deserts.

To our precariously balanced world, where shifting sensibilities lurchingly guide expression and conduct, Shock-Headed Peter offers a remnant of a past where things are tongue-in-cheek simpler — where the recalcitrant child or cruel adult gets his or her comeuppance. There’s no waiting for the wheels of justice to grind slowly: here resolutions arrive in fast-forward time.

Bolchazy-Carducci has just published a new version of this classic, featuring a stylistically elegant, rhyming Latin translation accessible to non-scholarly readers. It includes the original German text and a popular English translation on facing pages. Readers are treated to Hoffmann’s original illustrations, along with detailed enlargements.

The appendix features a new, never-before-published contemporary English translation, “Scruffypete,” by Ann Elizabeth Wild. The afterword by Walter Sauer explores the history of the work and its Latin translations. A select Latin-English glossary completes the text.

Visit Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers at www.bolchazy.com for more information on Shock-Headed Peter. The book is available from Bolchazy-Carducci and at bookstores nationwide, including Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon.com.

Courtesy of ARA Content, www.aracontent.com, e-mail: info@aracontent.com