‘Our memories are either large or small chests of drawers. In my own head, for instance, the chest of drawers is rather small. The drawers are only half full, but they’re fairly tidy. When I was a little boy my chest of drawers looked quite different. In those days my little top storey was a real lumber room . . .’
Erich Kästner, journalist, screenwriter and author of the immortal children’s book Emil and the Detectives, was born at the end of the nineteenth century in Dresden – that ‘wonderful city full of art and history’ which was razed to the ground by the Allies in 1945.
‘To this day the Governments of the great Powers are disputing with each other as to who murdered Dresden’, he writes. ‘Ah, what is the use of quarrelling about it. You will not bring Dresden back to life by so doing – neither its beauty nor its dead.’ Yet that, in a sense, is what he does in this delightful memoir, first published in the 1950s, recreating for us the city of his childhood where ‘past and present lived in perfect unity’, where he could ‘breathe in beauty as foresters’ children breathe in woodland air’.
When I Was a Little Boy, delightfully illustrated by Horst Lemke, is an affecting picture of both Erich Kästner’s childhood and the city he never ceased to mourn.
Please read on for an extract from this touching book, along with a selection of recommendations for other tempting reading.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF staff
Jess, Isabel, Rebecca, Izzy & Jennie
P. S. Lastly, a huge thank you to all those who have bought a ticket (or, in some cases, tens of tickets) for our Charity Prize draw for BookTrust. Quite extraordinarily, 1,650 tickets have already been snapped up since we launched the Draw on 12 July. The draw is running until 16 September and tickets will be available until that date or until they sell out. There are only 4,500 tickets available and, once gone, they’re gone!