I have talked about the city library of my childhood, the one that had been into turned into an apartment building when the library moved to the "Adelberger Kornhaus" in 1981. To be fair, the old building had been an apartment building before housing a library, first the American library after the Second World War which was then merged with the city's own library.
I'm sure the librarians appreciated the comfort of the new building (well, actually old as the Kornhaus is one of the few still existing medieval buildings in town which was restored for the library).
I know I would as a librarian, but of course I haven't forgotten the library I grew up with and was the foundation for my reading habit, you could say (as was my family).
The feeling of going in there and not only looking for new books, but also returning over and over again to the comfort reads of my childhood, drawn to certain shelves like a magnet still lingers in my memory.
Which brings us to the book I picked from my cabinet today - "Die Lockett-Kinder" by M. E. Atkinson (only the German translations say "Mary E.") which was first published in 1954 and whose original title is "August Adventure", published in 1936.
It's the first one of a fourteen book series about the three Lockett children and their friends. I think my library had all six that I know were translated into German. They are collectibles now, so I'm glad I already own five of them and also a few English ones! Instead of getting the last German one, though, I ordered the five books I'm still missing in English which only cost me about twice as much as the one book.
The Lockett children are Oliver (12), Jane (13), and Bill (10). Their parents live in India. Jane lives with an aunt and uncle while her brothers are in a boarding school and only come home in the holidays. Luckily, there are several aunts who take turns in taking the three during the holidays.
In this book, however, all of the aunts go travelling at the same time, so they are invited for the summer holidays by their Aunt Lavinia whom they don't even know yet. She's a painter and a free spirit who sometimes just takes off in her brightly painted horse wagon roaming the lands.
When the children get to her house, though, Lavinia isn't there. Instead they find a strange man who tells them Lavinia has taken a trip and won't be back home soon. A tag left on the table mentions a town.
We all know what the children have to do now, right? Of course they have to take the horse wagon and get to that town. They do send Lavinia a telegram hoping it will get forwarded to the current address which they don't have and which the guy at the post office won't give them, but they can't wait around at the house with a strange man in it who tells them - not very convincingly - that he has rented that house for those ten days or so.
To make matters slightly more difficult - really better, though, how they find out soon - there's a girl standing at the door saying that she was sent to stay with Lavinia because her grandmother is sick and that her five year old brother Robin will join them as well.
Luckily, Anna is experienced with horses and knows how to deal with Pegasus and Robin is much more mature than the Locketts have anticipated.
On they go and the adventure can begin, and an adventure it truly is. They literally go through fire and water, save a dog, spend a night in a haunted house, play cricket, some of their money gets stolen, and much more. More importantly, they make new friends and some enemies as well, but of course we get a happy ending.
Ah, those times when children could still travel hundreds of miles by themselves!
Granted, one village butcher questions this to be a good idea, but after leaving that village they get around hearing more unsolicited opinions by grown-ups - honestly, how dare they? - by putting Anna's long braids up to make her look older as she's the tallest of them. Amazing how easy it is to deceive adults, especially if you take into account that Anna is actually a few months younger than Jane.
I loved the books so much and I so envied these kids being allowed to live the life of the free when I really knew I would have missed my bed very much on the first night. That's the nice thing about books, you can pretend and dream.
Maybe I was also jealous that they were so practical and skilled. They cooked, they knew how to send a telegram and drive a horse wagon, and they never seemed to be very afraid ... a little, but not enough to keep them from going and always finding a way to deal with the circumstances.
I would probably have had a hard time making it to the next village.
By the way, if you have read my post about Enid Blyton and domestication, foreignization, and continuation books last year, you may wonder about the German translations.
Obviously, I can't compare directly as I only have the books either in German or in English, but from what I've read my guess is nothing much has been changed except for translating "Manor" in a house's name to the German "Herrenhaus".
Also there are footnotes, one explaining English boarding schools, the others, quite lengthy, explaining cricket. It would have been easy to change the German text, turning cricket into another sport, for example. That suggests foreignization rather than domestication.
It's really a pity that there are almost no illustrations. The English originals were beautifully illustrated by Harold Jones.
The cover of the German book is not a Jones illustration, but I can't tell you who did it because they didn't get any credit in the book.
There you can only find a map showing the Locketts' trip. The original was also by Jones, but this one isn't. You can tell it's inspired by the original, but it isn't as elegant, and again there's no name.
I found a copy of the book listed in an online store for old books with the names Mary E. Atkinson and Susanne Ehmcke. Ehmcke was a German children's book author and illustrator, but that listing is the only one where I found the name in connection with "August Adventure" at all, so I have my doubts if it was really her.
When I think of the old library today, like when I pass the building, the first image coming to mind is always me heading to the A shelf and looking for the Locketts and often getting disappointed. The books were popular at that time and often checked out, well, and then I guess they were culled eventually when interest waned or the books were too damaged.
I'm looking forward to the ones that are heading my way to
complete my little collection.
Don't say goodbye to the Locketts just yet, they have a good chance of returning to this blog (especially with my favorite book!).
Further reading (including pictures of Harold Jones's illustrations):
1. **: August Adventure. On: The Silver Locket, August 29, 2021
2. **: August Adventure. On: The Silver Locket, August 18, 2024
3. Todd Klein: Rereading: AUGUST ADVENTURE by M. E. Atkinson. On: Todd's Blog, March 28, 2024
