Drowning In Berlin

Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives is deservedly one of the classic books for children. The plot is straightforward: boy comes to big city for the first time to stay with relatives, is robbed on the train of the money his mother had given him, follows the suspected thief and falls in with a bunch of street kids who help him bring the man to justice. It is down to earth and pretty realistic as children’s books go, with strong characters, the right level of peril without too much risk of inducing nightmares, and a really striking portrayal of the urban experience (that’s paralleled, arguably, by a lonely small-town child discovering what it’s like to be part of a gang, in the good sense). The book is also, as I realised on re-reading it, conscious of social issues in an interesting manner, especially about class and money – for example, there’s a fascinating exchange between some of the boys about how often and how explicitly money gets talked about at home and what this might…