R.I.P. Christine Nöstlinger, 81, in June (Austrian author & HCAA Medalist)

[l***@yahoo.com]

She died in Vienna.

https://vaaju.com/germanyeng/christine-nostlinger-childrens-bookwriter-christine-nostlinger-has-died/
(short obit in English)

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1216&bih=880&ei=-WdKW7xciuv9BvO7v8gF&q=81+christine+nostlinger&oq=81+christine+nostlinger&gs_l=psy-ab.3...585646.585965.0.586092.3.3.0.0.0.0.83.149.2.2.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..1.0.0....0.oXRENAsL4To
(obits, in German)

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://diepresse.com/home/kultur/literatur/5463878/Christine-Noestlinger_Sie-hat-auf-den-Gurkenkoenig-gepfiffen&prev=search
(translation of one obit)

Excerpt:

...Yes, she also wrote nonfiction books, including three cookbooks (eg, "With two left-handed spoons") and literary texts for adults. The series "Iba de gaunz oaman Kinda", "Iba de gaunz oaman Fraun" and "Iba de gaunz oaman Mauna": Even the titles show how wonderful laconically her Viennese look - her Hernalserisch, she would have specified. Accuracy was important to her, you remember how she once told how she had walked as a child on the Ottakringer road, right in the middle, on the border between Ottakring and Hernals, left and right, the small houses.

She herself was a poor child, ashamed of living on the ground floor, and she was, as she noted in her "Memoirs", "a lot craver than others of my age." And she was really poor to the very poor people close, without sentimentalism, without social romanticism: she was a woolen Social Democrat, both parents had suffered under the Nazis, their mother had been retired early, so as not to indoctrinate the children with Nazi songs. Her childhood during the Second World War, she worked for example in "cockchafer fly!" In the fantastic novel "We whistle on the Gurkenkönig" she showed her profound disgust with presumptuous authorities.

Without anger. She was too cool for that. Would she have accepted the adjective? Stoic she acted, with all commitment, saved with facial expressions. In her books, she did not lament problems, but simply portrayed them, including parents' marital problems: that was new in children's literature. In the idyll she was not at home. And when asked, she said clearly: No, she did not want to be educated....


https://www.google.com/search?q=christine+nostlinger&biw=1920&bih=906&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBteWB_efPAhUJET4KHSBcCzwQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=christine+nostlinger+books&imgrc=_
(book covers)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.arts.books.childrens/gjj1d3FG21w/EGYKZryFBAAJ;context-place=forum/rec.arts.books.childrens
(birthday post from 2016)

First third or so:

She won the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1984 and was also nominated in 1976.

(Her birthday was on Oct. 13th, the same as Australian HCAA Medalist Robert Ingpen's.)

She won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2003.

One of her best-known books is "Conrad: The Factory-Made Boy" (1975).

About that one:

"A woman keeps on sending off for free offers and is surprised to receive a large tin which contains a ready-made seven-year-old. His perfect behaviour makes him the butt of schoolchildren and he is unhappy. Eventually it is discovered that he was sent to the wrong address and the firm come to collect him. Fearing their visit, the boy quickly learns very bad behaviour so that they won't want him back and he succeeds in putting them off and in winning friends at school. A good tale about behaviour and about unfair expectations of children by parents; an amusing, if implausible, tale."

(There's a very amusing one-star review of the same book at Amazon, too.)

About "Fly Away Home" (1973):

"An award-winning World War II story based on the author’s own childhood experiences. When her family’s apartment in Vienna is bombed, Christel Goth and her family lose everything. They are offered the use of a summer villa in the suburbs, and walk there in just the clothes they stand up in. The war is ending, and there is a precarious existence eking out food stores, and anticipating horrors from the oncoming Russian army. But when they come, the worst the soldiers do is get drunk and fire their guns. It’s a tense time, and Christel’s active curiosity leads her into all sorts of dangerous places."

About "The Cucumber King" (1972):

"Wolfi Hoglemann and his family live an uneventful life until the Cucumber King suddenly appaears from the depths of their cellar claiming to have been evicted by his potato-like subjects, the Kumi-Oris, and throwing himself on the mercy of the Hogelmanns. The disruptive influence of the autocratic King on the Hogelmann household provides the basis for an hilarious and revealing comedy of family life." ...

(snip)



Lenona.

[Guilty Bastard]

Post by l***@yahoo.com
She died in Vienna.
https://vaaju.com/germanyeng/christine-nostlinger-childrens-bookwriter-christine-nostlinger-has-died/
(short obit in English)
One of her best-known books is "Conrad: The Factory-Made Boy" (1975).
"A woman keeps on sending off for free offers and is surprised to receive a large tin which contains a
ready-made seven-year-old. His perfect behaviour makes him the butt of schoolchildren and he is
unhappy. Eventually it is discovered that he was sent to the wrong address and the firm come to
collect him. Fearing their visit, the boy quickly learns very bad behaviour so that they won't want him
back and he succeeds in putting them off and in winning friends at school. A good tale about behaviour
and about unfair expectations of children by parents; an amusing, if implausible, tale."

Yes, it was an implausible story since we all know that perfect behavior
is cherished in schools and in society in general.

[l***@yahoo.com]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/christine-nostlinger-award-winning-childrens-writer-from-austria-dies-at-81/2018/07/16/1a391e30-890e-11e8-85ae-511bc1146b0b_story.html?utm_term=.2f59eca5cad7

Most of it:

...If less known in the United States, Ms. Nöstlinger was a major literary force in Europe, where she acquired a reputation as a champion for disadvantaged children and racial equality. Her books, which included collections of poetry and journalism for adults, sold millions of copies and were translated into 30 languages.

In a statement, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen wrote that the country had “lost one of its most important international literary voices” as well as “a loud and clear voice against all forms of injustice and oppression.”

A onetime art-school student, Ms. Nöstlinger thought she was about to launch her career as an illustrator when she drew a plump, red-haired girl with an impish personality. Writing a children’s story to accompany her sketches, she published “Fiery Frederica” in 1970 — a German-language book that was more acclaimed for its prose than its pictures.

“As I was very keen on approval at the time, I took to writing,” Ms. Nöstlinger later quipped.

The story of Frederica, like nearly all of Ms. Nöstlinger’s tales for children, was fantastical but not escapist, with serious themes but a dash of silliness that drew comparisons to British writer E. Nesbit. At its center is a girl who is bullied because of her brightly colored hair, which has magical powers that enable her to flee her tormentors.

While the book’s protagonist escaped into a new and better world, Ms. Nöstlinger said she sought to encourage children to create such a world here on Earth.

“Since children live in an environment which offers them no encouragement to develop utopias for themselves, we have to take them by the arm and show them how beautiful, cheerful, just and humane this world could be,” she said in 1984, accepting the Hans Christian Andersen Award for children’s literature.

“Rightly done,” she continued, “this will make children long for that better world, and their longing will make them willing to think about what must be initiated in order to produce the world they long for.”

Among Ms. Nöstlinger’s best-known books was the young-adult novel “Fly Away Home” (1973), which was based on her childhood in Vienna during World War II, when the city was occupied by Nazi forces and then the Soviet Red Army. (The book was adapted into an Austrian film of the same name in 2016.)...

(description of how she shared the inaugural Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award with Maurice Sendak and what the jury said)

...Ms. Nöstlinger, who was reportedly twice married, dropped out of art school in the late 1950s to raise her two daughters, Christiane Nöstlinger and Barbara Waldschütz. They later contributed illustrations to her books.

A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Ms. Nöstlinger received one of Austria’s highest national honors, the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic, and in recent years published books including “Being a Woman Isn’t a Sport” (2011), a collection of her newspaper columns, and “Happiness Is a Moment” (2013), a memoir.

She had stopped writing for children altogether, she told the magazine News shortly before her death, in part because she found herself out of touch with today’s young readers.

“How am I supposed to know what makes kids move when they sit on their smartphone for half a day and do something with two thumbs on it?” she said. “Besides, if I hear what today’s kids like to read, it’s mostly fantasy, and it’s so far from me. . . . I understand that they have a longing to flee this complicated world and to go to another, where other rules, different laws prevail and ultimately good always triumphs. But that’s not what I could write.”

(end)

Incredibly, there are only 3 comments so far - but they're worth reading.

Lenona.