Funny, rude, distasteful, exciting, bizarre and at times downright vulgar: Tosca Menten is it all. Last week, a collection of highs and lows was published on the occasion of her 25th anniversary as a writer. An aunt loses weight by swallowing a tapeworm, two children swat a plague of mice out of a cheese shop with a tennis racket, a grandfather takes over a wart from someone. Not every stomach is strong enough for it, but kids seem to love it.
For years, her twelve-part, three-times filmed hit series was Dummie the Mummy (from 2009, largely illustrated by Elly Hees). That success may now have been taken over by new crowd favorites such as The amazing tree house and Dog Manbut her annual reading collection, in which she makes fun of the theme of Children’s Book Week, is still doing well in the upper grades of primary school.
Menten made his debut in 1999 with Villa Mustard and the revenge of Count Gruwel. This is followed by one crazy adventure story after another, full of exaggeration and grotesque twists. It earns her a comparison with Roald Dahl. Which is too much honor, but the two share a boundless sense of humor and curlicue language.
About the author
Pjotr van Lenteren prescribes de Volkskrant about children’s literature. He is chairman of the Boekids children’s book festival.
The anniversary anthology The giant pancake (Van Goor; € 20; 10+; illustrated by Geert Gratama) contains, in addition to two new stories and an adaptation of her debut, a selection from her short story collections. The reader gets a good idea of Menten’s oeuvre, who sold more than 2 million books and won one prize after another from the Children’s Jury. Despite this, it is rarely viewed by experts as anything other than a marketing machine that gets children reading. Are those experts doing Menten a disservice?
A little though. If you look closely, you will find original corners in her baroque fantasy. Such as the nightmarish story ‘The Beech in’. Peer doesn’t like crowds and suggests playing a tree in the decor of the group 8 musical. His aunt loves theater and thinks Peer’s withdrawn behavior is nonsense. But she does want to sew him a suit and, unrecognizable as a beech, take over his role for a while.
The crazy beech tree turned out to be a great success. Until Aunt gets the flu. And then the suddenly popular Peer can no longer return. An original variation on the classic liar motif, which would not be out of place in a novel for adults.
The story ‘The Bet’ is also highly regarded. The bullied Joep bets that he dares to eat a spider in front of the class and wakes up the next morning with eight legs. The spider decides to eat the class bully. Another day later, Joep and the bully appear to have been switched. A derailed, dark children’s version of Kafka’s The Verwandlung.
It is true: a large part of Menten’s oeuvre has little substance. It consists of detailed jokes, with a lot of make-believe and hardly any emotional depth. Pride is punished, expressing a secret wish is guaranteed to end badly and solving problems only leads to new accidents. Menten just thunders on, without a pause for breath.
That is a bit tiring. But sometimes there seems to be more behind all those jokes and jokes. A warm empathy for outsiders, a Greek sense of tragedy and a fine nose for human inability that – where it is not frightening or funny – is moving.
She herself aptly says, in the story of Uncle Ali, who never manages to hold down a job for more than a few days and still enjoys life: ‘Anyone can turn a cake into a shit. But the trick is to make a pie out of a turd.” That’s how it is.
