Out of the Hitler Time trilogy: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Bombs on Aunt Dainty, A Small Person Far Away. Judith Kerr

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       Why You’ll Love This Book by Michael Morpurgo

      Judith Kerr is a writer with a unique talent. There is no one I think, who has managed to achieve what she has done, that is to create at least three masterpieces, each in a different genre, and not only that she has illustrated all of them herself.

      The Tiger Who Came to Tea was recently chosen as the best picture book ever created. Told in her elegant, understated, almost matter of fact style, we are all left at the end (child and adult) believing in the possibility that the next knock on the door could herald the visit of the tiger, or an elephant, or a hippopotamus, the visitor might create certain difficulties, but that’s just life, these things happen.

      Then there’s Mog, who along with Pooh and Paddington, Spot and Blue Kangaroo, has become a household character for parents and children. Unlike Judith’s Tiger, Mog is no fantasy. We have all known cats who behave like this. There’s no messing with Mog. This is a cat that gets into all sorts of scrapes and manages to survive, but it’s also a cat that washes himself, does his business and (after a lot more than 9 lives) ultimately even dies, a proper cat, a cat for all seasons, all households.

      Had these extraordinary feline creatures been Judith Kerr’s entire life’s work, it would have been enough to establish her as one of very greatest and most beloved of all children’s writers/illustrators. But at about the same time as we first read about that tiger who so bizarrely came to tea, and about Mog too, Judith Kerr produced another book, to my mind her finest work. But this was a work of an entirely different kind, which has become one of the classics of children’s literature.

      When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, published forty years ago, speaks to us of a time most of us know only through books of history and fiction, through archive film, as well as through movies. It is from The Diary of Anne Frank to I am David and Schindlers List and The Pianist that most of us have our haunting but distant insights into the lives of those who had experienced the terrors and horrors of Nazi persecution and extermination. Most universally known, undoubtedly, is The Diary of Anne Frank. The power of Anne Frank’s story is that we know it is true, that these are her words, her thoughts, her feelings. Miraculously they survived. Tragically, she did not. Imagine for one moment that the Frank family had somehow managed to escape, to find their way to England and safety. Imagine Anne Frank had lived. What would her diary have told us then? The truth is that many thousands like Anne did find their way to safety and a new life. Happily for us, Judith Kerr was one of these.

      Judith’s father, Alfred, was a distinguished German journalist, who had no illusions about the Nazis. In 1933 his books, considered subversive by the Nazi’s, were burned along with those of Zola, H.G. Wells, Franz Kafka and many others. He realised what was coming, but even so only managed to get his family out just in time, in so much of a rush that little Judith’s beloved pink rabbit was left behind, stolen by Hitler.

      Judith Kerr’s experience of their escape into Switzerland, of living there for a while as refugees, and their life in France before their family settled in England, is the heart of her great novel. It always was a powerful story, but it has over the years become a hugely relevant story too, because it is a story as much of our time as it is a story of Hitler’s time.

      When people make wars, they make refugees. When there is tyranny and oppression and hardship, there are refugees. We live in a world where there are many wars, great tyrannies and oppression, and a greater amount of refugees than ever before. There are also millions of economic refugees. The experience of leaving home and family and friends, all that is familiar, and finding a new home in a different place, culture and language was Judith Kerr’s experience. It is the experience of so many. But what shines through this autobiographic novel is how after so many difficulties and sadnesses – her own brother was interned for a while during the Second World war because he was a German, and her family was forced to live in ever more desperate circumstances – Judith still remained positive; found a way of fitting in and becoming “British”, found a way of finding her own voice. It is a story told, like her cat books, like her tiger book, in a tone that is understated, matter of fact, elegant, modest. It is tender and telling, and ultimately the most life-enhancing book you could ever wish to read.

       Michael Morpurgo

      Michael Morpurgo is one of the most well-known and best-loved children’s authors, and from 2003 to 2005 he was the Children’s Laureate. Michael has written over a hundred books, short stories, screenplays and musicals, and has won many prizes including the Blue Peter Book Award and the Red House Children’s Book Award for Private Peaceful, and the Smarties Prize for The Butterfly Lion.