Many adults do not understand that the most outlandish ideas often have the greatest potential for everyday enrichment.

They, the adults, would only have to remember what kind of nonsense they came up with when they were young, small and scratchy.

Once they become parents, one of the parenting tasks is to mold the offspring into responsible people while repeating the "live your dreams" postcard rumble.

If the children were serious about living their dreams, i.e. giving free rein to their craving for junk and junk, the need would be great.

Kai Spanke

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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More harmless is the desire for the most beautiful hug in the world.

She too was a dream – in the truest sense of the word.

Best of all, the dreamer is a sometimes childish, sometimes childish adult of the order Anura.

Superclass: jawmouths.

Name: Konrad Kröterich von Biscuit.

This fellow is neither a walking center of ambivalence nor an annoying little child scheme, but something in between.

He is quite funny, a little animal that, if you were to stretch it a little further, would have to run through the world in a sixteen by nine format.

At the same time he is a bit grumpy, often overwhelmed and dissatisfied.

A fan of extensive lounging sessions

The composer, musician and author Oren Lavie, born in Tel Aviv in 1976, dedicated his second children's book to this mixture of obstinacy and cuteness.

With a relaxed hand, Anke Kuhl lends the story dynamics and shimmering expressiveness – the eyes, the faces!

The fact that Konrad is a child's head in the body of an adult toad becomes clear when he demonstrates what he thinks of the virtue of postponing needs: "There's no time to lose!" to entertain again unselected (fine rib) wardrobe with one's own mirror image.

That's supposed to happen more often and if we're honest, it's basically not worth mentioning.

However, Konrad doesn't stop there: "He had just put his bed in front of the mirror so that he could look at himself while he was sleeping at night." So he is clearly strange, because of course nobody can watch himself sleeping.

What he's gazing at while awake instead is his skeptical face during a lounging session (eyelids at half-mast) and his framed portrait on the wall (broad grin).

In other words, he sees himself twice, the portrait being the mirror image of a posed picture.

We, in turn, observe the toad observing itself.

Not all that uncomplicated, but also not stupid: On just one page of the book, Oren Lavie and Anke Kuhl deal with the question of the rules of self-perception and that of others.

Where the harmony hammer hangs

After his dream, Konrad imagines that he can be happy if he finds the right person to hug him perfectly.

He doesn't do it below that, perfection is the top priority here.

So he goes on a search and lets himself be hugged by a giraffe and a goldfish, a cow and a tiger, a snake and a porcupine, a kangaroo and an earthworm, among others.

success rate?

Do not ask!

Frustrated and exhausted, Konrad then discusses the fiasco with his geraniums.

He's particularly fond of doing that, because the flowers don't answer.

Is that normal?

Swam over it.

Finally, even the press is interested in Konrad's offbeat idea.

And luckily it doesn't work without a bang when a cross-species hugging flash mob shows where the harmony hammer hangs at the grand finale.

We don't want to anticipate the moral of the story.

Only so much: It is a true, beautiful and good rush, which one could hardly cheer children prettier.

Oren Lavie and Anke Kuhl: "Konrad Kröterich and the search for the most beautiful hug".

Translated from English by Mathias Jeschke.

Fischer Sauerländer, Frankfurt 2022. 272 ​​p., hardcover, €16.

From 4 years