Children’s book “Bosco Rübe races through the year”: muesli with apple juice – culture

They write together and each for themselves, their novels have won all the important prizes that exist in this country, they founded the Edition Huckepack in Mairisch Verlag for stories of the kind they want, and they are certainly among the most inventive authors and authors of current German-language children’s and youth literature: Dita Zipfel and Finn-Ole Heinrich are language artists and storytellers. In their books they celebrate life, even if it’s not always just funny.

But sometimes that’s exactly what it is. For example, when the Berlin urban family Rübe celebrates their chaotically loud bedtime ritual: the picture book “Sleep like beets. Little people’s big bedtime”published last year, is a nonsense poem in which everything gets tangled and mixed up until Mama, Papa, Alva, Rosa and Bosco finally slumber under the covers.

Now the Rübe family, one member after the other, is being examined more closely. The youngest starts: “Bosco Rübe races through the year”, through his new year of life. There are worlds between a third and a fourth birthday, and that’s exactly what the crazy, funny, lovable stories “for everyone from the age of 3” that this book collects tell.

What was supposed to be a slip of the tongue has become a new word

Everything has its place: the moment of waking up, the moment of grief after kissing goodbye in the children’s shop, the family trip to the zoo, visiting grandparents, life in the big city of Berlin or Bosco’s tantrums – because on some days nothing just goes right. Then Bosco wants muesli without milk. But with apple juice. Just with apple milk. What’s not to understand about that?

It is precisely this overwhelming children’s logic and anarchic approach to life that Dita Zipfel and Finn-Ole Heinrich masterfully capture. For the exploration of the beet cosmos, they have expanded their creative duo into a trio again, as in the previous book: the illustrator Tine Schulz provides the images for the comical sound of the two authors. Together they invent a new language. The stories “Kletterbrokant” and “Schokoachterbahn” show how this works. Bosco and his girlfriend Linne are lying next to each other on a garland of green round giant candies. They look like they’re shoving each other before forming a chocolate rollercoaster. The fact that this roller coaster is also one of the feelings and that the stories also deal with envy and loneliness makes the feat that this book succeeds perfect.

Every now and then the thought creeps in that adults will be enchanted by Bosco’s world even more than small children. In any case, the enormous empathy of Jan-Ole Heinrich and Dita Zipfel also refreshes readers who are no longer quite young in search of lost time: when one’s own birthday meant the greatest happiness imaginable and when waking up in the night the “mama cloud” in the parents’ bed was the greatest Security.

But wait a minute, back again – “climbing brocant”? Bosco’s friend Linne brought her favorite candy – brittle leaves – to the kindergarten and shares it outside in the garden with Bosco, for whom it becomes a real awakening experience: “It melts over Bosco’s tongue, warm as cocoa, as he knows and loves it, and then there’s the brittleness, just like Linne said. Soft and hard. Crumbly and kind of perfect.” This leads to the final mantra: “Climbing brocant. Climbing brocant. Climbing brocant.”

The children’s eyes are closed, their mouths smile blissfully – what was supposed to be a slip of the tongue has become a new word. There is the preciousness of brocade, the deliciousness of brittle, the magic of storytelling and the enchantment of books like this.