Franziska Biermann’s “Fuchs” stories about private detective Jacky Marrone and the book-hungry Mr. Fuchs are successful far beyond the German-speaking world; In the latest children’s book by the all-rounder – Biermann is an award-winning author, illustrator, musician and reading artist – for once foxes do not play a role. Here everything revolves around rabbits, more precisely around dinosaur light rabbits “Nuralagus lux”. Like the giant rabbit Nuralagus rex, whose bones were discovered during excavations on Menorca, these come directly from prehistoric times. The fictional rabbits are also considered extinct, but have survived unnoticed in the biotope of the Hermann Igel School, “an overgrown meadow that has never been mowed in the history of the earth”. But now their continued existence is also threatened: the school director wants to build the coolest gym in all of northern Germany on the overgrown wasteland. The last hope of the rabbits, whose whiskers and droppings glow in the dark, is a savior sent by the “infinite Mummelmann”.
Who owns the earth? Can a gym be built on the biotope?
But who could that be? Fate chose Robert Kümmelmann from 5b. A boy who avoids all trouble and physical activity, but has a pronounced weakness for sweets. After accidentally swallowing a rabbit hair during the biology lesson in which the class is supposed to explore the biotope, Robert turns into a giant glowing rabbit (after involuntarily ingesting an extra large portion of carrot salad). As an oversized rodent, he can not only communicate with people and animals and play football like a young god, but suddenly has a superpower he has never known before: self-confidence.
In a successful mixture of fantastic and real, comic and serious elements, Biermann knits a children’s novel that inspires with (literary) allusions, witty language and funny, two-tone printed comic drawings. Robert’s adventure is much more than a weird metamorphosis story. Because text and image practice social criticism, name grievances and call for critical questions: Who owns the earth? Can a gym be built on the biotope even though animals (endangered) live there? The answer – at least in this story – is a compromise that makes everyone happy. (from 9 years)
Franziska Biermann: Rabbit Boy. The strange transformation of Robert Kümmelmann. dtv 2022. 208 pages, 14 euros.