Ferdinand, the bull (children's book)

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Ferdinand the bull as a sculpture on Helgö in Sweden , 2008.

Ferdinand, the bull is the German title of the 1936 children's book The Story of Ferdinand by the American author Munro Leaf (1905–1976).

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The main character of the book, Ferdinand , is a young Spanish bull who would rather smell the flowers in his pasture than compete against toreros in the bullring . But one day he is stung by a bumblebee, and he behaves like mad with pain. When the bullring managers see this, they immediately buy it for the next big bullfight. In the arena, however, he is as peaceful as ever. With this he brings the picadores and toreros to despair, and they have no choice but to bring Ferdinand back to his homeland.

Origin and reception

Leaf is said to have written the booklet in no time in 1935 to give his friend Robert Lawson an opportunity to prove his talent as an illustrator. It appeared in 1936 and immediately became a bestseller.

However, after the Spanish Civil War (July 1936 - April 1939) broke out only a few months earlier and Franco had risen to dictator, the story was described by some adult readers as a “bitter satire of pacifism ” and “either as a red or a pro - fascist propaganda label “Criticized. The author repeatedly denied this intention and stated in an interview with the New York Times that Ferdinand's unwillingness to fight in Madrid was "nothing more (and nothing less) than the expression of the hero's good taste and strength of character"; Ferdinand is "simply a sublime soul, a philosopher". In the following years the story was also internationally successful and translated into numerous languages.

All previous German-language editions use the translation by Fritz Güttinger . This first appeared in 1942 under the title Ferdinand, der Stier , using Lawson's illustrations , by Verlag Amstutz, Herdeg and Co. based in Zurich and Leipzig. The book found widespread distribution in war-torn Berlin in 1946, when Jella Lepman (later founder of the International Youth Library ), who had returned from American exile, distributed thousands of copies among the city's children.

The East Berlin Alfred Holz Verlag published another version under this title in 1965, the pictures of which were by Werner Klemke . This version was also taken over under license from the Federal German Parabel-Verlag Munich. It was not until 1977 that the Swiss Diogenes Verlag published a version with the original drawings by Lawson under the title Ferdinand .

In 1938, Walt Disney adapted the book under the title Ferdinand, der Stier ( OT Ferdinand the Bull ) as a short cartoon similar to those of his series Silly Symphonies . The following year, this film received an Oscar in the category Best Short Film (Animation) .

In December 2017, a feature-length film (again US) was made by Blue Sky Studios using modern computer animation technology . It bears the title Ferdinand - Go bullish! ( OT Ferdinand ).

literature

expenditure

  • The Story of Ferdinand . With drawings by Robert Lawson. Viking Press, New York 1936. (American first edition)
  • Ferdinand . From the American by Fritz Güttinger. With drawings by Robert Lawson. Diogenes, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-257-00742-6

Secondary literature

  • John Gall: A Physician's Take on Ferdinand . In: Elizabeth Goodenough and Andrea Immel (Eds.): Under Fire: Childhood in the Shadow of War . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2008, pp. 223-227, ISBN 9788143340405
  • Martin Grotjahn : Ferdinand the Bull: Psychoanalytic Remarks about a Modern Totem Animal . In: American Imago 1, 1940, pp. 33-41.
  • Sharon McQueen: The Story of "The Story of Ferdinand": The Creation of a Cultural Icon . Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison 2012.
  • Jean Streufert Patrick: Robert Lawson's The Story of Ferdinand: Death in the Afternoon or Life Under the Cork Tree? . In: Perry Nodelman (Ed.): Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature , Vol. 3: Picture Books . Children's Literature Association, West Lafayette, IN 1989, pp. 74-84, ISBN 0-937263-03-6
  • Michael Steig: Ferdinand and Wee Gillis at Half-Century . In: Children's Literature Association Quarterly 14: 3, 1989, pp. 118-123.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leonard S. Marcus: Minders of Make-believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston 2008, pp. 126-127.
  2. ^ Anita Silvey: The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston 2002, p. 351.