Heiner and Hanni
Heiner and Hanni or Julia and Alexander ( Dutch : Jip en Janneke ) are the two main characters from the children's books of the same name by the Dutch writer Annie MG Schmidt . These books are among the most successful and popular children's books in the Netherlands and have been translated into various languages (including German).
content
Heiner and Hanni are two preschool children. They are neighboring children and often play with and with one another. They have nice parents who allow them a lot, but also sometimes have to forbid something. Other minor characters are the cat, the dog, Jannekes doll and Jips bear. Hundreds of short stories - often no longer than a page or two - tell how they play in the cozy, familiar home environment, how they discover the world of adults and sometimes how they do something that their parents forbid them to do. Although there is a certain division of gender roles between the two children - Heiner is a little naughty and daring, Hanni is more social and likes to play with dolls - their characters are pretty much in agreement. Sometimes they quarrel, but soon make up again.
Emergence
Schmidt had been writing poems for children for the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool since shortly after the end of the war . When the inspiration for these poems waned, something new began: short prose stories about two young children. While the children's poems often dealt with fairy tale characters, the inspiration for the Jip-en-Janneke stories came from everyday life: Schmidt based them on the actual experiences of her son Flip and his neighbor's girl. She later said that she wrote these stories very easily: she could finish them in minutes. The first story about the two children was published on September 13, 1952, after she wrote a new story every week. The last episode appeared in the newspaper five years later.
November 1953 a collection of the Jip-en-Janneke stories was published in book form for the first time. Many other episodes, eight in all (later only five), followed. The first editions of these books had hyphens between syllables to make reading easier for children; later editions gave up this spelling as the books were intended to be read aloud rather than read by yourself. In 1977 the entire Heiner and Hanni stories appeared in one volume for the first time. Although the stories from the 1950s are sometimes very out of date (no TVs, low prices, few people have a car) they are still extremely popular in the Netherlands.
photos
Heiner and Hanni owe their popularity in part to their pictures. For the Jip-en-Janne suite, Schmidt worked for the first time with Fiep Westendorp (while her earlier poems had been illustrated by cartoonist Wim Bijmoer ). Westendorp drew Heiner and Hanni as silhouettes because she feared that figures with thin lines would be difficult to see on newsprint. Much later, in the second half of the 1970s, Westendorp made color pictures some of the stories. The old black and white pictures were now so well known that Heiner and Hanni appeared as black silhouettes in these new color pictures.
When the books were published in Great Britain, the editor feared discrimination because Heiner and Hanni could be viewed as negroes. For this edition (under the name Bob and Jilly ) he had other pictures drawn.
Translations
In the Netherlands, translations into Latin ( Jippus et Jannica ) and Twentsche ( Jipke en Jannöaken ) are available. The book has been translated into English no less than three times ( Mick and Mandy , Bob and Jilly, and finally just Jip and Janneke ). Other languages the book is available in are Estonian, Hebrew, Indonesian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Lithuanian.
Web links
'* Article on Heiner and Hanni at the Royal Library of the Netherlands (Dutch)
supporting documents
- ↑ Alma littera (publisher) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
