Toon Tellegen
Not a Day Went By (Er ging geen dag voorbij)
Er ging geen dag voorbij (Not a Day Went By, 1984) is a collection of forty-nine animal stories about the squirrel, the ant, the cricket, the elephant, the bear, the whale and the other creatures who feel at home in surroundings where woodland, river, mountain, desert and sea lie close together.
The animals are all the same size and there’s only one of each kind. The stories are short and exceptionally imaginative and poetic. The book has a number of recurring themes. Squirrel travels a lot; he’s always looking for something, but he doesn’t know what.
‘Is this the other side?’ asks the squirrel after swimming across the great lake. ‘No, that’s the other side, where you’ve just come from.’
So he quickly swims back to the other side! The story in which the giraffe invites him to go on a voyage of discovery is wonderful.
‘To discover what?’ asks the squirrel. ‘Well, if I knew that, it wouldn’t be a voyage of discovery any more, would it?’
These stories are little gems that are reminiscent of the philosophical discussions between Pooh and Piglet. Time is also an important theme in Squirrel’s life. He concludes most poetically:
‘I am only now. I have never been later and I shall never be before.’
Some of the animal stories are very melancholic ones. When the ant takes the squirrel’s belongings on his back to help him move house, he slips and everything falls into the depths:
‘Oh,’ said the ant. ‘Yes,’ said the squirrel, with tears in his eyes, as he saw his chair take a swan dive over the river before disappearing into the water.’
Not one word too many and every word in its place! These are funny and touching stories full of absurd situations and simple profundities, fascinating because of Tellegen’s concise use of words and the absence of explanations. And all of this is beautifully complemented by the pen drawings of Jan Jutte.
By Dorine Louwerens
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
Er ging geen dag voorbij (1984, 108 pp)
Illustrations: Jan Jutte
Age: 8+
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
Because, when it comes to Tellegen, only one question remains: is he a writer or a genius? I suspect the latter.
De Morgen
Toon Tellegen’s short stories provide endless pleasure, because you can read them over and over, and then you have to read them out loud too, again and again.
Die Zeit