Not everyone has dragons

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Not everyone has dragons (English original title: Poo-Poo and the Dragons ) is a children's book by Cecil Scott Forester from 1942.

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The young Harald Hieronymus “Dudu” Braun crawls into a fuchsia blossom out of boredom in his parents' garden and ends up in a bizarre fantasy world. Here he meets a tame dragon and takes it home with him. His father is open to the newcomer and calls him Horatio Hieronymus Drache , Frau Braun can only be convinced when Horatio makes himself useful in the garden.

The Braun family experiences a lot of exciting things with their new member: Horatio proves his erudition at school, but also causes a stir when he goes to the cinema and is then even wanted by the police. After 14 melons have been stolen, he has to work off the damage from the dealer and happens to be an advertising medium in a pump room. After swallowing a radio, a ringmaster thinks the dragon can sing and hires him to perform. In the ring, however, the batteries fail and Mr. Braun can only just save the situation, much to the delight of the audience.

On another visit to the fuchsia, Dudu and Horatio come across a lady dragon who follows them home. Mr. Braun, not very happy about the new addition, calls her "Irmintrude". The two dragons immediately make themselves useful by heating the water of a lake with their fire and thus enabling the children to bathe. On the way home, however, Irmintrude caused a little traffic chaos. The next day she suffers from a fever, so that veterinarian Dr. Eschengrüdel prescribes a snow cure. The Brauns then drive into the mountains, where the dragons clear a snow-covered road.

After her return, Irmintrude causes trouble again when she steals the pram from the neighbor Mrs. Dockmeuser-Trackenfuss along with her son Wigbert and takes him for a walk. Mr. Braun locates them and brings Wigbert back to his mother before policeman Überzwerch arrives.

After a joint steamboat ride and a shopping spree, which Irmintrude use for a visit to the beauty salon and Horatio for another turbulent visit to the cinema, Dudu and the dragons take a housecleaning as an opportunity to hide in the fuchsia, from where they after some strange experiences and to The horror of Frau Braun's return home covered in paint, tar and dust.

Irmintrude lays an egg, a rare occurrence for dragons. However, their way of hatching it by breathing fire triggers a fire brigade. After it has been treated in this way over a longer period of time, "Maximilian" hatches. The Brauns organize a big birthday party to which many people who appear in the novel appear as guests.

background

The book was written after Forester was home alone with his sons and George, then 8, refused to eat. At dinner, Forester would improvise stories when his son ate in return. This is how the characters of the poo-poo and the three dragons were created, which were shortly afterwards combined into a novel. Robert Lawson provided the illustrations for the original edition . The book was published in 1942 by the “Michael Joseph Ltd.” publishing house in London. In 1966 Adolf Himmel did a German translation for Verlag Sauerländer and Sigbert Mohn Verlag ; the rights lay with Bertelsmann Jugendbuchverlag .

Adaptations

The Augsburger Puppenkiste converted the book into a four-part TV production in 1975. The story was published in the same year by EMI Electrola GmbH as an audio book on record and music cassette .

Trivia

Forester later used the first name "Horatio" for his fictional character " Horatio Hornblower ", which was to make him famous. It is based on Horatio Nelson .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Poo-Poo and the Dragons on goodreads.com (English), accessed December 30, 2019
  2. ↑ a b Edition notes in: CS Forester: Not everyone has dragons , bt Jugend-Taschenbuch, Aarau / Frankfurt am Main 1966, ISBN 3-7941-0196-0
  3. ↑ a b Radio play dragons not everyone has on stars-an-faeden.de , accessed on August 3, 2020
  4. ↑ Not everyone has dragons on fernsehserien.de, accessed on December 30, 2019
  5. ↑ Hornblower. Hacked lead on spiegel.de , accessed December 30, 2019