Insu-Pu
Insu-Pu is a children's and youth novel by Mira Lobe , which is about a group of lost children who have to survive on a lonely island.
action
The country of Urbien is at war and exposed to air strikes. Michael, the grandson of the president of the friendly but not involved in the war state of Terrania, persuades his grandfather to ship children from the war zone to Terrania and thus to bring them to safety. A little later, a ship convoy with children sets off for Terrania, with siblings Stefan and Thomas, friends of the president's son, on board. The ship with the siblings hits a mine and sinks. Almost all children can be rescued on the other ships with lifeboats, only the boat with Stefan, Thomas and nine other children on board drifts away unnoticed.
The boat is stranded on a lonely island and the children between nine and sixteen, four girls and seven boys, are left to their own devices. A hierarchy quickly develops and the oldest of the children, the boy scout Oliver, becomes the leader of the group. The children explore the island and each child is assigned a task according to their abilities. In this way, the children manage to set up, care for and survive on the island, which they call Insu-Pu , despite individual conflicts . They build a house, keep pets and replace their quickly worn clothes with hides from hunted animals.
Michael does not lose hope that the missing children may have survived. Since his grandfather does not share this hope, he goes unauthorized by plane in search of the missing people who had managed to send a radio message from a plane that crashed on the island. Finally he discovers the island and the children, who are then picked up from the island by ship.
publication
The novel is Mira Lobe's debut. It first appeared in Tel Aviv in 1948 in Hebrew under the title אי הילדים, "Island of the Children". It was later translated into several languages.
For the German version of the book, published in 1951, praise deleted all references to World War II. While the original Hebrew version and the English translation deal with the aerial warfare against England and the evacuation of British children to the United States, the German version shows the fictional country Urbien at war and the children are shipped to the war- free territory . The children in this version also have different, German-speaking names.
filming
The BBC filmed the novel in 1984 as an eight-part miniseries Children’s Island . In Germany, the series was broadcast on Pro Sieben in 1989 and 1991 under the title Elf kleine Insulaner . The film adaptation follows the original version of the novel with references to the Second World War.
Reviews
“Mira Lobe weaves a captivating story that you hardly want to put down again. (...) Lobe succeeds in giving each child their own place in the story and highlighting their particularities. Not only the children on Insu-Pu quickly notice, but also those who hold the book in their hands that everyone is something special and can and must contribute to society. (...) With this book, the successful author proves that her pictorial language, which moves close to the child, as well as the constant alternation between dialogue and narration, create a good narrative flow. This guarantees a close bond between the reader and the events. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The island of lost children on kinderbuch-couch.de, accessed on July 26, 2020.
- ↑ Broadcast dates on fernsehserien.de, accessed on July 10, 2020.