Series
Collection
Description
A child king introduces reforms to give children the same rights as adults.
Publication
Algonquin Books (2004), Edition: Translation, 344 pages
User reviews
LibraryThing member anneofia
According to Esme Raji Codell who wrote the introduction for the edition i read, "King Matt the First" is one of the greatest children's books ever written. And, according to the back of the book, Maurice Sendak thinks so too. I guess it was that recommendation that made me pick it up in the first
The book was fascinating, even though it dragged a little in places. But I suppose those were the very places a kid would have loved! And, as the author says in the forward, "This is a book for kids, and grown-ups shouldn't read it." At first I thought this was a fantasy story, but I very quickly found out differently. The book was originally written in Polish in 1923. When Matt has to lead his people in war at the beginning of the story, he does so disguised as a peasant boy because his grown-up advisors won't let him leave the palace. And he doesn't go charging up with a magic sword! No, he shoots from the trenches he and his soldier companions have laborously dug themselves. Cannons are booming all around them and artilliary planes are flying overhead dropping bombs whenever they can. This would have been really high-tech stuff back in 1923! Of course Matt's side wins, and he is magnanimous in forgiving the three kingdoms who fought against him. His ministers see it differently, though. They are aghast when Matt doesn't demand retribution of any sort.
The book has a psychological depth that goes far beyond the ordinary childhood literature. I also enjoyed it for its humor and its intriguing plot, but the end of it is really jolting. Never mind the fact that it ends with a miracle and a cliff hanger (was there ever a sequel?)! I think adults really can identify with the book - they just have to dust off their childhood
imagination. But I wonder if the children of today would really identify with Matt? Any way, the message of this book is still relevant and important - that children matter, and that they should be a priority in our culture.
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place. It's the story of a young boy of 10 or so, who, upon the death of his father the king, must learn to rule his country as wisely and well as his father did before him. The summary on the back of the book says: "After the death of his father, young Matt is left with the task of ruling a country. Determined, he navigates around his doubting grown-up advisers to implement his reforms. Schools outfitted with carousels! Building a zoo that is the envy of the world! He fights in battles, braves the jungle, and crosses the desert, but perhaps the most life-altering thing of all is that the lonely boy king finds true friends. This timeless book shows us not only what children's literature can be, but what children can be."The book was fascinating, even though it dragged a little in places. But I suppose those were the very places a kid would have loved! And, as the author says in the forward, "This is a book for kids, and grown-ups shouldn't read it." At first I thought this was a fantasy story, but I very quickly found out differently. The book was originally written in Polish in 1923. When Matt has to lead his people in war at the beginning of the story, he does so disguised as a peasant boy because his grown-up advisors won't let him leave the palace. And he doesn't go charging up with a magic sword! No, he shoots from the trenches he and his soldier companions have laborously dug themselves. Cannons are booming all around them and artilliary planes are flying overhead dropping bombs whenever they can. This would have been really high-tech stuff back in 1923! Of course Matt's side wins, and he is magnanimous in forgiving the three kingdoms who fought against him. His ministers see it differently, though. They are aghast when Matt doesn't demand retribution of any sort.
The book has a psychological depth that goes far beyond the ordinary childhood literature. I also enjoyed it for its humor and its intriguing plot, but the end of it is really jolting. Never mind the fact that it ends with a miracle and a cliff hanger (was there ever a sequel?)! I think adults really can identify with the book - they just have to dust off their childhood
imagination. But I wonder if the children of today would really identify with Matt? Any way, the message of this book is still relevant and important - that children matter, and that they should be a priority in our culture.
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LibraryThing member SirRoger
Esmé is right to recommend this book. It's a great book for children and adults. It's refreshing how formulaic it is NOT, and I love that while Matt makes big mistakes, he always learns from them.
LibraryThing member livebug
Here's a book I wish I enjoyed more.
It's a pretty dated little tale of a boy who becomes king and does things as king that king-children would do (like decree that every child in the kingdom should receive a pound of chocolate). He runs away to war, establishes a children's parliament, banishes his
BUT. In case you aren't steeped in Jewish history, Janusz Korczak, the author, started a children's orphanage for Jewish kids in Warsaw in 1910, one that sounds kinda close to Matt's kingdom (with a children's parliament and court system and all). In addition to being a doctor, this orphanage and the children it served became his life.
I think we all know how well the Jews of Warsaw fared during the Holocaust. Korczak was a prominent citizen and had mulitple opportunities to escape the Warsaw Ghetto but refused to leave behind the 200 kids he accompanied. In fact he followed them all the way to the gas chambers.
So reading this in my warm American home as a novel for well-fed American kids leaves me unmoved, but imagining them as escapist tales for Jewish orphans on the train to Treblinka leaves me ... moved.
It's a pretty dated little tale of a boy who becomes king and does things as king that king-children would do (like decree that every child in the kingdom should receive a pound of chocolate). He runs away to war, establishes a children's parliament, banishes his
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ministers ... There's a long subplot about his friend Bum Drum, king of the African cannibals, that probably played well in 1923 when it was originally published but not so much with the PC crowd now. All in all, it's a series of little adventures that ends rather sadly and abruptly when little King Matt's reforms backfire, he loses his kingdom and is banished to a desert island (after his death sentence is commuted). !! Not anything I'd be handing to any kids too soon.BUT. In case you aren't steeped in Jewish history, Janusz Korczak, the author, started a children's orphanage for Jewish kids in Warsaw in 1910, one that sounds kinda close to Matt's kingdom (with a children's parliament and court system and all). In addition to being a doctor, this orphanage and the children it served became his life.
I think we all know how well the Jews of Warsaw fared during the Holocaust. Korczak was a prominent citizen and had mulitple opportunities to escape the Warsaw Ghetto but refused to leave behind the 200 kids he accompanied. In fact he followed them all the way to the gas chambers.
So reading this in my warm American home as a novel for well-fed American kids leaves me unmoved, but imagining them as escapist tales for Jewish orphans on the train to Treblinka leaves me ... moved.
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LibraryThing member AbigailAdams26
When Matt's father dies, the young boy - so young that he cannot yet write - finds himself crowned king, and embarking upon a journey that will take him from the battle-field to the state room, from the glittering capital cities of his neighbor kings, to the African jungle domain of the cannibal
Originally published in 1923, as Król Maciuś Pierwszy ("King Macius the First"), this classic of Polish children's literature is notable, not just for the story it contains - a story which incorporates its creator's ideas about pedagogical reform - but for the identity of its author. Janusz Korczak was the pen-name of Polish-Jewish pediatrician, author, and educational theorist Henryk Goldszmit, who, in the years prior to WWII, ran both a Catholic and a Jewish orphanage, and who, when offered a chance to escape the ghetto, and the Nazi Final Solution, refused to abandon the young Jewish orphans in his care, going to his death, with them, at the Treblinka death camp. Korczak's own story has been retold for children in such books as The Champion of Children: The Story of Janusz Korczak, and his immensely influential ideas about child development can be found in such works as When I Am Little Again and "The Child's Right to Respect".
That said, this is a deeply flawed book, ethically speaking, and I am rather surprised to see how infrequently any of the online reviews I have been reading, see fit to challenge (or even mention) the overt racism to be found in its pages. Bruno Bettelheim, who wrote the introduction to my edition, at least acknowledges that some might find the content problematic, although he goes on the offer the standard defense/apologia, claiming that King Matt the First was simply the product of its own time, and that people back then, in 1920s Poland (and elsewhere in Europe, one presumes) simply didn't know any better, when it came to the peoples of Africa, and (to a lesser extent) the 'Orient.' Ignorance as an excuse for... well, ignorance. And prejudice. I'm a little less blithe about the issue, however, and couldn't read any of the passages about the 'savage' 'cannibals' of Africa, without wincing. It isn't that they are depicted as terrible people - as Bettelheim correctly points out, King Bum Drum, and his daughter Klu Klu, are the only royals who don't betray Matt, and are depicted as genuinely moral - but the constant sense of patronizing condescension, the way in which Matt sets out to 'educate' them, and correct their cultural mistakes, is intensely grating, and constantly threw me out of the story. The preoccupation with cannibalism that can be seen in Korczak's work, even if tempered with a kinder depiction of the cannibals than is usually seen, is itself a marker of a colonialist mindset - yes, there were cannibals in Africa, but I'm not sure how widespread the practice was, and certainly do not believe that every culture and kingdom on the continent (as depicted here) was involved, until shown the error of their ways by the more civilized Europeans - and seems to surface rather frequently in the children's literature written before a certain point.
Still, I'm not one of these people who believes that ethically imperfect works of literature should be abandoned, if they have something to offer, artistically or intellectually, and despite the issue of the Africans' depiction here, I did find much of interest in King Matt the First, and am not sorry to have read it. The idea of giving children a say in their own governance, as enacted in the story, mirrors Korczak's methods in running his orphanages, which had parliaments as well. The notion that 'civilization,' as embodied by European monarchy, leads to a less moral people than the 'barbarism' of Africa - an argument that I think the author is making, and which might stand as an anti-racist counter-point to the unfortunate nature of his depiction of non-Europeans - is ground-breaking, for its time. I cannot say that I rushed through the book - sometimes I found it something of a struggle to stay involved - but then, I imagine that young readers might relish a tale in which the young are in charge (even if the results prove disastrous!), and the adults must obey. All in all, a book worth reading, if one bears in mind that it has problematic aspects. I would recommend it - with the caveat that adults should be available to discuss the outdated aspects of the tale - to young readers who enjoy adventure stories, and to anyone who appreciates more philosophical children's books.
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King Bum Drum. With many false starts - having his annoying ministers arrested, for instance, and then realizing he can't govern without them - Matt sets out to reform his country, establishing a constitutional monarchy, and (most revolutionary of all) attempting to ensure that children's rights are protected, by creating a Children's Parliament alongside the adult one, in order to give young people a voice. But despite all of his sincere efforts, Matt discovers too late that reforming (as the "Sad King" had warned him) is a dangerous business, and that envy, fear and discontent are powerful forces in the world...Originally published in 1923, as Król Maciuś Pierwszy ("King Macius the First"), this classic of Polish children's literature is notable, not just for the story it contains - a story which incorporates its creator's ideas about pedagogical reform - but for the identity of its author. Janusz Korczak was the pen-name of Polish-Jewish pediatrician, author, and educational theorist Henryk Goldszmit, who, in the years prior to WWII, ran both a Catholic and a Jewish orphanage, and who, when offered a chance to escape the ghetto, and the Nazi Final Solution, refused to abandon the young Jewish orphans in his care, going to his death, with them, at the Treblinka death camp. Korczak's own story has been retold for children in such books as The Champion of Children: The Story of Janusz Korczak, and his immensely influential ideas about child development can be found in such works as When I Am Little Again and "The Child's Right to Respect".
That said, this is a deeply flawed book, ethically speaking, and I am rather surprised to see how infrequently any of the online reviews I have been reading, see fit to challenge (or even mention) the overt racism to be found in its pages. Bruno Bettelheim, who wrote the introduction to my edition, at least acknowledges that some might find the content problematic, although he goes on the offer the standard defense/apologia, claiming that King Matt the First was simply the product of its own time, and that people back then, in 1920s Poland (and elsewhere in Europe, one presumes) simply didn't know any better, when it came to the peoples of Africa, and (to a lesser extent) the 'Orient.' Ignorance as an excuse for... well, ignorance. And prejudice. I'm a little less blithe about the issue, however, and couldn't read any of the passages about the 'savage' 'cannibals' of Africa, without wincing. It isn't that they are depicted as terrible people - as Bettelheim correctly points out, King Bum Drum, and his daughter Klu Klu, are the only royals who don't betray Matt, and are depicted as genuinely moral - but the constant sense of patronizing condescension, the way in which Matt sets out to 'educate' them, and correct their cultural mistakes, is intensely grating, and constantly threw me out of the story. The preoccupation with cannibalism that can be seen in Korczak's work, even if tempered with a kinder depiction of the cannibals than is usually seen, is itself a marker of a colonialist mindset - yes, there were cannibals in Africa, but I'm not sure how widespread the practice was, and certainly do not believe that every culture and kingdom on the continent (as depicted here) was involved, until shown the error of their ways by the more civilized Europeans - and seems to surface rather frequently in the children's literature written before a certain point.
Still, I'm not one of these people who believes that ethically imperfect works of literature should be abandoned, if they have something to offer, artistically or intellectually, and despite the issue of the Africans' depiction here, I did find much of interest in King Matt the First, and am not sorry to have read it. The idea of giving children a say in their own governance, as enacted in the story, mirrors Korczak's methods in running his orphanages, which had parliaments as well. The notion that 'civilization,' as embodied by European monarchy, leads to a less moral people than the 'barbarism' of Africa - an argument that I think the author is making, and which might stand as an anti-racist counter-point to the unfortunate nature of his depiction of non-Europeans - is ground-breaking, for its time. I cannot say that I rushed through the book - sometimes I found it something of a struggle to stay involved - but then, I imagine that young readers might relish a tale in which the young are in charge (even if the results prove disastrous!), and the adults must obey. All in all, a book worth reading, if one bears in mind that it has problematic aspects. I would recommend it - with the caveat that adults should be available to discuss the outdated aspects of the tale - to young readers who enjoy adventure stories, and to anyone who appreciates more philosophical children's books.
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Language
Original language
Polish
Original publication date
1923
1986, English Translation by Richard Lourie
Physical description
344 p.; 5.96 inches
ISBN
1565124421 / 9781565124424