Mein Urgroßvater und ich
(My Great Grandfather and I)
James Krüss (1926–1997) is still considered one of the greatest German authors of books for children and teenagers to this day. His works were and are read and well-loved by young and old all over the world. His first major success was My Great Grandfather and I. With this work, the eloquent poet from the island of Heligoland established a completely new form of children's book: A host of stories and poems that are all about language is woven into a dense background story that centres on the twelve-year-old Boy and his great-grandfather, who writes poems. It is set on the island of Heligoland, which is the locale of James Krüss's wildly imaginative and exuberant experiments with language. A sentence about a mouse, for example, keeps on growing until it is as long as a rat's tail; a sailmaker becomes the king of Naples with two words, and Nowhere becomes a kingdom.
