Type: children's
Status: neutral
Authors: Jean_Claude Mourlevat Y. Maudet
Tags: france childrens_lit Tom_Thumb fairy_tale_adaptations
Description: Winner of the Batchelder award for translation (and the Prix Sorcieres in France), this unusualWinner of the Batchelder award for translation (and the Prix Sorcieres in France), this unusual short novel is a medley of voices and a re-telling (re-visioning) of the Tom Thumb story. Opens with the voice of a social worker who is troubled by a 10-year-old named Yann Doutreleau, who is a miniature (not a dwarf) and a mute -- and highly intelligent. He has three sets of identical twin brothers older -- and parents who abuse them all. Yann overhears the father saying he's going to kill 7 newborn kittens -- and he insists his brothers run away to the ocean with him. They walk, they hitchhike, the take a train, etc. We hear from all 7 brothers, the mother, the father, the social worker, various people who glimpse them on the run, the man who locks them into his summer house as burglars (the equivalent of the Ogre?), etc. In the end the six older brothers go back home, while Yann (Tom Thumb) heads out to sea on a ship. Strange... but interesting....
2007-08-02
