International Children's and Youth Literature

_09.00_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Große Bühne

Readings for pupils
In “Facing the Lion", an autobiographical account, Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton (Kenya) gives his audience an insight into the archaic and ritualised culture of the Massai-warriors and cow-sheperds. In a simple and riveting style, he tells of his first encounter with a lion, of the social rules in the village, the important event of the circumcision, his time in a missionary school, of his confrontation with modern technology and his alienating arrival in the USA, where he studied and worked as a sociology teacher.
School years: 7-9
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_09.30_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Readings for pupils
Silently, a man on his boat lands on a beach, ties it up with strange equipment, ropes and stakes, and moves into an old house on the dunes. In his picture book "Es war finster und merkwürdig still" (t: It was dark and eerily quiet), Einar Turkowski (Germany) narrates how the townspeople observe the eccentric suspiciously and from afar. It soon becomes clear that the stranger is a cloud-fisher and uses his equipment to catch clouds and cause them to rain down splendid fish that the resentful, hate-filled locals would also like to possess.
School years: 3/4
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_10.00_children and young adults
LesArt

“Looking for Alaska”. With John Green (USA)
Workshops for pupils
The sixteen-year-old first-person narrator Miles lives in the Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama. There he makes some remarkable friends, among them a girl, whose name is not the only extraordinary thing about her: Alaska. Miles’s unusual hobby – he collects dying people’s last words – permeates the friends’ discussions about life and death like a leitmotif. The story starts 136 days before and ends 136 days after an unheard-of event...
In order to prepare for a meeting with the author, the young participants will examine the content and form of this adolescent novel, which has as its central theme American young people’s view of life. Does the novel express exclusively American experiences, or can young people living in Berlin also sympathise with the characters in the novel? In order to bring themselves closer to the characters, the participants will work on their own translations of selected passages.
The preparatory session (Part 1 of the 2-part LesArt-event) as well as today’s meeting with John Green is accompanied by Rudolf Wenzel. During the meeting, the young participants will have the chance to exchange views with John Green about the content and form of his debut novel. Afterwards the author will read from his second adolescent book “An Abundance of Katharines”. In this book he puts forward a theory for everything – even love...
Part 1: 16.09.2008, 09.00 Uhr (ca. 3 hrs.), LesArt
Led by: Rudolf Wenzel (LesArt). School years: 1x 9/10
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_11.30_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Readings for pupils
An old building, a deserted street, a new family…Beatrice Masini (Italy) “Diario di una casa vuota” (t: Diary of an Abandoned House), Beatrice Masini tells of an empty house that comes back to life: one day, when a family comes to view the house, considering to move in, the children Alma and Tim fall for the haunted place. Even when the move doesn’t happen, the pair use the house as a secret hiding-place, play in the staircase and the garden. Gradually, the house starts to breathe again. Until one winter’s day...
School years: 4/5
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_17.30_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Duck, Death and the Tulip. A meeting with Wolf Erlbruch (Germany)
Children’s and Youth Literature for Adults
The artist Wolf Erlbruch became world famous with his children‘s book “The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit”. His artistic handwriting and pictorial language have greatly influenced children’s book illustration since the nineties. He adores old paper, refined collages and coloured pencils, topographical maps and stamps. He fashions highly-skilled and unfussy drawings and collages, in which the material and drawn elements morph into either grotesque or entirely ordinary image worlds. His works, of which many are already “classics”, deal with grand themes such as the creation story (“In the Beginning”, 2003) or the meaning of life (“The Big Question”, 2007), but also simple stories, like the one about the little mole.
He will be presenting his considerable œuvre – from his beginnings as a graphic artist, to his work in advertising, to his work as a children’s book illustrator, including his latest book, “Duck, Death and the Tulip”. After his slide-show, he will draw live to accompany the reading of his book “Mrs Meyer, the bird”.
Presented by: Shelly Kupferberg. Book signing afterwards.
Suitable for educators, students, parents, young people and art enthusiasts.
Entry: 6/5/4 €. (Online-)ticket presales on www.berlinerfestspiele.de (available immediately) as well as (from 01.09.2008) on Tel. (030) 254 89 100.