One very distinct category
of books that I liked, although I cannot find any scholarly term for
it, were books about utter poverty. I have already written about The little ruggamuffin, which isn't a children's book but was
launched as one in the Soviet Union and became an indispensible part
of the children's literature canon. I am sure I would have loved
Jessica's First Prayer, but any mention of religion outruled
books in my atheistic Motherland.
There were, however, books
from the satellite states, such as Bulgaria and Romania, and I am not
even sure they were children's books, but books about childhood,
perhaps with autobiographical traits. I have found one. The title, One
boy's miseries, says it all. Oliver Twist is an idyll in
comparison.
Another book that I remember well I could not find
because the title keeps hitting a business company, and I don't
remember the author. In one episode, the main character's baby sister
gets sick, and the poverty-stricken mother calls a wise woman, who
shoves the baby into the oven. The baby wails, and the boy screams at
his mother that she will burn to death, but the wise woman just says
it is the sickness getting out. Then the baby is quiet. End of
chapter. In the next chapter, the mother buys a little coffin. I was
terrified by this story, but as all children terrified by stories I
kept re-reading it. I don't think I cried over it as I did over
stories about cruelty to animals, but they surely touched something
in my heart. I grew up in relative wealth, in a loving family. If the
purpose of the misery stories was to evoke compassion they were
successful.
The absolute
favourite in this genre was Mottel, the Cantor's Son,
by the great Sholom Aleichem. I didn't know anything about the
author, and I didn't know anything about the Jewish culture or the
Pale, where the story takes place. For me, it was just another wonderful misery
book, and just like the other misery books, it had a lot of
naughty-boy pranks and a lot of joy and humour right in the middle of
all misery. I was puzzled that the family moved to America in the end
of the book, because it brought the story into reality from a
completely imaginary world and therefore made it less credible. In
re-reading, I ignored the ending.
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