Toon Tellegen

In the Middle of the Night (Middenin de nacht)

New adventures in the animal forest

It is dark in Toon Tellegen’s animal forest. Squirrel wakes up with a start when someone taps on his window. This is the start of a restless night in which a carp, a beetle, an elephant, a fire-fly and a cabbage worm will fight insomnia. Small thoughts can sometimes grow grotesque in the dark and some animals grow melancholy, something no one can explain. The owl struggles with his smallness in the omnipresent darkness, the hedgehog cleans like mad to impress unexpected guests. Only the worm and the mole are happy, celebrating darkness with melancholy songs sung deep underground.

Middenin de nacht (In the Middle of the Night) is a collection of thirty-four new adventures in the animal forest, in which Tellegen once again proves his mastery of the art of the short story. Using minimalist language and pared-down plotting, he creates a universe in which there is room for wonder – wonder about language, or a thought, or a sunrise which looks very different when viewed upside-down. Although night-time stimulates the darker side of the mind – even festive cakes look pitch black and taste soggy and bitter – the style is as playful and light as ever. Now and again there is a glimmer of light, like the happy dream of the cricket who, in his mind’s eye, is voted the ‘most birthdayish animal’ in the world. And, as the sun chases every worry from the mind after a wakeful night, the new day brings redemption. The reader can rest assured that the squirrel will soon be awoken by an ant gently knocking on his front door.

Tellegen wrote these stories as a tribute to Mance Post, the illustrator of his animal forest who turned eighty in January 2005. She has lovingly drawn the wakeful, pensive animals, and her black cut-outs on a dark blue background highlighted with white contours, heighten the effect of midnight mystery.

Annemarie Terhell

Publisher

Querido
Singel 262
NL - 1016 AC Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 551 12 62
FAX +31 20 639 19 68
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.querido.nl

Publishing details

Middenin de nacht (2005, 79 pp)
Age: 10+

Middenin de nacht

Biography

Toon Tellegen (b. 1941), a GP by profession, became famous primarily for his poetic, philosophical animal stories about Squirrel, Ant, Mole, Hedgehog and the other animals, who are carefully trying to find their way in an incomprehensible world. However, his extensive oeuvre also includes fairytales, children’s books and poetry and prose for adults. Tellegen began his writing career as a poet. In 1984 he published Er ging geen dag voorbij (Not a Day Went By), his first collection of animal stories for children. Four more collections were to follow and all these stories were then collected in Misschien wisten zij alles (Perhaps They Knew Everything, 1995). Two of Tellegen’s books feature the elephant as the main character: in Jannes (1993), an elephant leads the protected life of a young child in a world in which every being wears a trunk. In Teunis (1996), on the other hand, the main character is the only elephant in a world of human beings, which results in the humorous description of the struggle of someone who is ‘different’. Besides his animal stories, Tellegen also created Juffrouw Kachel (Miss Stove, 1991), the terror of all schoolchildren, and Mijn vader (My Father, 1994), a loving portrait of the world’s most amazing father. It is no surprise that he has won both the Theo Thijssen Prize (an oeuvre award for writers of books for children and young adults) and the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire oeuvre

Quotes

Toon Tellegen is the great liberator of words. He gives words a chance to unfold their wings, they put on a warm coat and go off to see the world. The result is a surrealistic tendency in Tellegen’s books, normal laws no longer apply, everything becomes new strange, funny, amazing.

NRC Handelsblad

Translations

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