The Passing of the Pink Rabbit
The other day, I read the sad news in The Guardian that Judith Kerr had died at the age of ninety-five. Another piece of my childhood has gone.
I came into contact with her through When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. I know she is better known (at least in Britain) for other children's books, such as The Tiger Who Came to Tea, and the Mog series, but to me she will always bring memories of Anna, thinking about Hitler playing with her Pink Rabbit. She wrote two other semi-autobiographical books describing her adolescence and young adulthood, but the first is the best. Of late, the best thing she collaborated on (in my opinion) was the Christmas commercial for Sainsbury's in 2015. It features Mog, and Judith even has a cameo in it. You can see it here. I still laugh, and cry, every time I watch it.
But back when I read Pink Rabbit, Anna resonated with me. In short, it's about a well-to-do Jewish family living in Berlin. The father is a well-known critic and writer who has spoken against the Nazis. Just before the elections at the end of January, in 1933, he leaves for Switzerland. Anna, her brother Max, and their mother, leave soon after, without waiting for the elections to be held. They leave secretively, and can't take much with them. Anna has to decide between a new woolly dog she has recently received, and an older, loved pink rabbit that is getting threadbare. She decides to take the dog, confident that after the elections everything will return to normal, and they'll come back.
But they don't. And their temporary sojourn away from Berlin becomes permanent. Anna makes friends in a Swiss village outside Zurich, and has little problems with the Swiss German, and a local dialect. But the ways of Berlin schoolchildren are not the ways of Swiss schoolchildren, and she begins to feel a bit of an outsider at times. That feeling accentuates itself when the family moves to Paris. Anna and Max have to receive private tuition in the French language, and Anna finds it extremely difficult. She makes friends in Paris, as well, but the lack of fluency in French makes her feel even more of an outsider. Until the day she discovers that she finally understands the language enough not to translate into German in her head, she is miserable at school. After that, things get better for her, though she is still conscious of being different.
At the end, the family moves to London, where her father has hopes of selling a script to the BBC. In subsequent books, that feeling of being the outsider returns, especially once the war begins, and they are classified as enemy aliens. That feeling is what attracted me to her books, that of not completely belonging to the circle I was in.
My past is much simpler and undramatic. When my parents emigrated to the United States, I was a month and a half old. I grew up in Boston. But during my first years, I didn't speak English, though I must have understood it. I only spoke the Galician my parents spoke at home. When I began kindergarten, I was surrounded by children who were neighbors and had known each other almost from birth. A classmate mentioned to me, years later, that the first day of kindergarten I came up to him and started talking in Spanish, and he didn't know how to react. Except for a Polish girl who also spoke Polish with her parents, all the other classmates spoke only English from birth.
I quickly caught on to the language, unlike Anna in Paris, but I still felt a bit of an outsider. One of my constant daydreams was that my name was really Mary, and that I had been born at St. E.'s (Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton) like most of my classmates seemed to have been born. So, Anna's story of a German family in French Paris was familiar to me. Mine was a Spanish family in American Boston. Different customs, different languages, but the same humanity. She made friends; I made friends. And we were both frustrated at feeling like outsiders.
Judith Kerr will always be one of my favorite childhood authors. But, slowly, those who trafficked in dreams and childhood imagination are disappearing. All things must pass, and they leave behind a beautiful legacy, but it's still heartbreaking.
I came into contact with her through When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. I know she is better known (at least in Britain) for other children's books, such as The Tiger Who Came to Tea, and the Mog series, but to me she will always bring memories of Anna, thinking about Hitler playing with her Pink Rabbit. She wrote two other semi-autobiographical books describing her adolescence and young adulthood, but the first is the best. Of late, the best thing she collaborated on (in my opinion) was the Christmas commercial for Sainsbury's in 2015. It features Mog, and Judith even has a cameo in it. You can see it here. I still laugh, and cry, every time I watch it.
But back when I read Pink Rabbit, Anna resonated with me. In short, it's about a well-to-do Jewish family living in Berlin. The father is a well-known critic and writer who has spoken against the Nazis. Just before the elections at the end of January, in 1933, he leaves for Switzerland. Anna, her brother Max, and their mother, leave soon after, without waiting for the elections to be held. They leave secretively, and can't take much with them. Anna has to decide between a new woolly dog she has recently received, and an older, loved pink rabbit that is getting threadbare. She decides to take the dog, confident that after the elections everything will return to normal, and they'll come back.
But they don't. And their temporary sojourn away from Berlin becomes permanent. Anna makes friends in a Swiss village outside Zurich, and has little problems with the Swiss German, and a local dialect. But the ways of Berlin schoolchildren are not the ways of Swiss schoolchildren, and she begins to feel a bit of an outsider at times. That feeling accentuates itself when the family moves to Paris. Anna and Max have to receive private tuition in the French language, and Anna finds it extremely difficult. She makes friends in Paris, as well, but the lack of fluency in French makes her feel even more of an outsider. Until the day she discovers that she finally understands the language enough not to translate into German in her head, she is miserable at school. After that, things get better for her, though she is still conscious of being different.
At the end, the family moves to London, where her father has hopes of selling a script to the BBC. In subsequent books, that feeling of being the outsider returns, especially once the war begins, and they are classified as enemy aliens. That feeling is what attracted me to her books, that of not completely belonging to the circle I was in.
My past is much simpler and undramatic. When my parents emigrated to the United States, I was a month and a half old. I grew up in Boston. But during my first years, I didn't speak English, though I must have understood it. I only spoke the Galician my parents spoke at home. When I began kindergarten, I was surrounded by children who were neighbors and had known each other almost from birth. A classmate mentioned to me, years later, that the first day of kindergarten I came up to him and started talking in Spanish, and he didn't know how to react. Except for a Polish girl who also spoke Polish with her parents, all the other classmates spoke only English from birth.
I quickly caught on to the language, unlike Anna in Paris, but I still felt a bit of an outsider. One of my constant daydreams was that my name was really Mary, and that I had been born at St. E.'s (Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton) like most of my classmates seemed to have been born. So, Anna's story of a German family in French Paris was familiar to me. Mine was a Spanish family in American Boston. Different customs, different languages, but the same humanity. She made friends; I made friends. And we were both frustrated at feeling like outsiders.
Judith Kerr will always be one of my favorite childhood authors. But, slowly, those who trafficked in dreams and childhood imagination are disappearing. All things must pass, and they leave behind a beautiful legacy, but it's still heartbreaking.
Lovely
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