The Story of the Little Mole

Like most people who have read the book, I find The Story of the Little Mole who knew it was None of his Business, by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch, utterly hilarious.

Yes, okay, it's a "poo book", and I know many librarians are totally over poo books, but this is a good one. A classic, you could say. And so very informative, in a scatological way. One could actually identify dung in the "wild" (if one lived on a farm in Europe) from reading this book.

Turns out the book is equally hilarious in German. I went looking for German children's books the other day to get some reading practise, and when I noticed this book was available I simply had to buy it.

Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat is perfect for a reading activity at the "slightly past complete beginner" level. You can get the 'gist' without quite knowing all the words for an initial read through, and then you can go back over it with a dictionary to see if you guessed correctly, or pick up on the details you missed.

Details which are somehow worth knowing, even if they aren't. Who doesn't need the word Pferdapfel in their vocabulary?

Anyway, I found myself a tad confused. One of the other books I bought was a German translation of Guess How Much I Love You, by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram (also really good for reading at a beginners German level), and it clearly mentioned on the verso that it was a translation. Vom Kleinen Maulwurf doesn't, which made me suspect it was originally written in German. I wanted to read the verso of the English version to see if I could find more information, but WE DON'T HAVE IT!

I am shocked. Absolutely and thoroughly shocked to find myself sitting in a library which does not have a copy of The Story of the Little Mole who knew it was None of his Business. Even more shocking - the other local libraries only had one copy between them, and that copy is missing. I must make sure we buy copies in multiple languages.

Anyway, I finally thought to google the original publisher of the book, and confirmed that the German version is, in fact, the original. However, at no point did any of the libraries I consulted (including the Libraries Australia public catalogue) mention that the English version was a translation. Neither did any of the bookshops I tried originally - although I did discover that there's an alternative English title: The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit - which is closer to the German title, but not as witty. No idea if it's the same translation or not, there's no mention of a translator. Or that it's a translation.

For some reason, Amazon.co.uk is trying to sell both versions of the book together. That must be disappointing to whoever wanted two different books.

Even the wikipedia entry neglected to mention that it was a German original. We'll have to fix that...

Anyway, I was a bit put out that I couldn't find this information in Trove, or in the first five libraries I clicked on. I would have thought the fact that a book was the English translation would be fairly basic information to put in a catalogue record. No doubt many of these libraries had it in the "full" record - but not in the one that was available to the general public. Every now and then I like to pretend I'm not a librarian and use the catalogue like a normal person. It's always interesting to note how much libraries like to keep their patrons in the dark.

The fifth library I tried actually included the words "English translation" in the record, but made no reference to the original version, or the translator. The sixth included the German title in the record, but didn't bother mentioning why. What is wrong with you people?

It shouldn't be this complicated to find out if an insanely popular children's book was originally written in German. Only Mr God knows why the libraries of Australia and booksellers of the greater English speaking world think such information is not worth mentioning.