The West feels affected by the political incorrectness of older children’s books, Roald Dahl or David Walliams are copied, and the cult Winnetou is condemned as racist. Against this, a wave of resistance is rising from supporters of artistic freedom or freedom of speech, and there are cries of censorship. And what about Slovakia? Is someone sneaking their hands on our children’s classic?
I don’t expect that a similar fiery controversy could break out here, lest someone would take the trouble to re-edit and publish older books, because in our country the mere fact that someone reads at all is considered heroic. However, we should be a little underestimating, because we are not worse than the West!
Treasures of the district library
So that you know who you are dealing with – yes, I am the kind of modern mother who practices liberal education, and when she comes to the library with her children, she often grabs something from the shelf in order to shorten her stay with her children in a public space. This is how the pearls of Slovak children’s classics often end up in her unworthy hands.
Otherwise, even the libraries are not what they used to be. In the children’s department, there is a swing hanging from the ceiling, next to it is a 1.5-meter plush mole, and interactive games are projected onto the floor – but when has the world seen that?
“Yes, take that, it’s golden,” says the librarian at my age, as I watch the children with one eye and scan the contents of Mária Haštová’s bookshelf with the other. We read a book by her before A tremendous thing, which the kids enjoyed: the action experiences of three siblings who live only with their mother. The story about the boy jumping off the roof of an apartment building with “wings” from a silk scarf his brother made him, and ending up in the hospital with broken limbs because he was lucky and fell on a pile of sand, raised my eyebrows a little. Or when these lovely siblings bought cigarettes with their saved money in their early teens and tried smoking at home in the bathroom. Probably unimaginable in a children’s book today, right? But let’s try the second book, the author has a fresh style and a sense of humor.
And so I take home a thin little book From the old furnace with a kitschy “gold” cover that has a red heart with the words “First Reading” on it. 6th edition, for readers aged six and up.
Bear, give me the skull
Siblings live together in the bosom of virgin nature. In the first story, a flock of ducks reaches the hives and the bees attack them: “When we found them, their heads were like balls, their lumps were like bubbles, their paws were like pillows, their eyes were like puffballs. Twelve mallard ducks died, and a beehive also died. Don’t you know, children, why?’
Um, well, I’m an oversensitive mother, something as natural as a cruel law of nature upsets me, I don’t even see any special point here. But let’s move on.
Squirrels were scrambling in the yard of a natural family, who committed a capital crime because they gnawed nuts and left them alone. And so little Anča did not hesitate, “she hung up the rifle, loaded it and was immediately back”. She hit, the dead squirrel fell to the ground. And Anča’s mother was certainly not from this hypersensitive time full of vegans, “measured, she didn’t know whether to praise her sister or to atone for the rifle”.
Here my eloquence still did not leave me, we talked with the children about whether they would feel sorry for the squirrel, whether it was not dangerous. Well, I ran out of words for Father’s tale:
“And grab him by the leg from under the turn! The claws of the pants and a piece of meat from the leg remained in the monstrous paw. ‘Bear, bear!’ ‘Catch him, beat him!’ the guys called. They immediately surrounded him from all sides and started hacking at him with machetes, axes and clubs. (…) The wounded honer dug the bear’s side with an ax. The bear roared and with one paw began to pluck the moss and plug the hole in the side, and with the other to hit the hoofs. (…) And here your great-grandfather jumps up with an ax and cuts his head in half with one swing. And the bear was gone.”
First reading, for readers aged six and up.
I admit quite unashamedly that I am the part