5 CLASSIC AND MODERN CLASSIC SWISS CHILDREN'S BOOKS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Today, August 1st is the Swiss National Day. On this day three Alpine cantons swore to be a confederation, the so called Rütlischwur. The Swiss celebrate this with bonfires, fireworks and obviously decorating everything with paper lanterns with the Swiss flag on it. We don't have any books on Swiss history at KinderBooks (yet), but here are some classic Swiss children's books!
You will find a more extensive list of 20 great classic and new picture books and chapter books from Switzerland - all titles we offer for rent within the US - here.
Selina Chönz / Alois Carigiet
SCHELLENURSLI
This is probably the all time classic, originally published in the 40es. It tells of the custom in the alps or rather the Engadin when in Spring the children chase the winter away by swinging cow bells. Little Ursli is upset when he is given the smallest bell of all and decides to hike up to the cabin in the mountains all by himself to get a bigger bell. Can he make it by himself?
Told in rhyme and with beautiful illustrations.
4 years and up.
Kathrin Schärer
SO WAR DAS! NEIN, SO! NEIN, SO!
The illustrator Kathrin Schärer often teams up with the writer Lorenz Pauli - any of their books or of Kathrin Schärer only are beautiful and often fun, too. In this books the fox, the bear and the badger start quarreling when their little tower collapses. Each of them has a different view point what actually happened - and whose fault it is. Who of them is right?
4 years and up.
Hans Fischer
PITSCHI
Pitschi is the smallest and youngest of a bunch of little kittens and unhappy: she doesn't want to be a kitten, but something different. So she runs off, and wants to be a a duck, a goat... but then she gets terribly scared when the fox gets super close in the chicken pen... A very moving (and for small kids also super suspenseful) tale.
4 years and up
GLOBIS ABENTEUERLICHE SCHWEIZER REISE
Globi is a cartoon character that made his first appearance in the 1930es and that all Swiss children (and parents and grandparents before them) know. The style has not changed much: Each page has black and white cartoons and a text in rhymes. 87 volumes have been published - Globi travels the world and Switzerland, is a sustainable farmer, works at the airport or as a polar researcher...
They are fun and educational at the same time.
5 years and up
Eveline Hasler
HEXE LAKRITZE
The little witch girl Lakritze has trouble getting up in the morning and being in school in time. And when she is tired she also struggles to get things right. When she tries to jinx a dragon, she somehow gets it wrong: her dragon has only a head and no body! She wonders, do humans have the same problems, do they also struggle to learn? She puts a spell on herself to become a fly, so she can be in school with kids to see for herself...
A great book for beginning readers or to read aloud.
5 years and up.
