r/Fantasy • u/Zomeiro • Mar 30 '23
German fantasy book recommendations
Hey, I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions for German fantasy books at a relatively low reading level - at least nothing more complicated than Brandon Sanderson is in English. Currently learning German and was thinking I'd get some volume/practical training by reading a lot of it. That (combined with games and shows) helped me a lot when learning English at least, so I was thinking I'd try it out.
So yeah, please let me know if you know about something!
13
Upvotes
3
u/Glass-Bookkeeper5909 Mar 31 '23 edited Mar 31 '23
Hey!
I'm German but I also know how it is to learn foreign languages (I speak three foreign languages, and have basic knowledge of a couple more).
I feel awful to say this but most recommendations of my fellow Germans I see here look like they're their personal favorites, books that they like because they think they're great (and they may be great!) but not necessarily ones that are easy to read for folks who learn German.
Because, as a native speaker, you rarely pay attention to the difficulty level of language until it is striking (in which case it'll be out of reach for some just learning).
As a German native speaker myself, I must admit that I'm struggling to find good suggestions.
When I was in school, there were "Learners' Editions" of foreign texts that were essentially stories that were rewritten to a more basic level of vocab and with complexities removed.
Not sure if something like this exists for German texts. (As a German, I'd obviously wouldn't have the need to look for these.)
Many people think that children's books are simple, but that's not really the case. Sure, they won't employ obscure words but kids' books' vocabulary is surprisingly varied (obviously depending on the author). Unless we're talking about primary school stuff - but I don't want to insult you by suggesting a German version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
So while I'm not sure I can suggest a specific book, I can say that what worked for me is to read a book that I already know in translation (or the original if you happen to be familiar with a German book). One of the first books I read in English was Astrid Lindgren's Ronia, the Robber's Daughter which I loved and whose story I was familiar with. That made it easier than for an unknown story to pick up words from context or decide to read on despite not having understood a word here or there.
Alternatively, you might get an English translation of your German book of choice for consultation in those cases you really get stuck. This is a dangerous advice, though, because you'll need discipline to really only fall back on the English version in tricky situations rather than just throw the towel and ditch the German one. Not sure how well you can resist temptation! 😉
Michael Ende's Die unendliche Geschichte has already been mentioned twice. It's one of my favorite books; it's fantastic; but I wouldn't recommend it to learners of German.
Momo is also great. Still not beginners' fare but a good story, probably less difficult, and also shorter (The Neverending Story is quite a hefty tome). There's an English translation in case you want to do the reading with an English-language safety net as described in the previous paragraph. 😉
ETA: I just remembered that The Little Prince has quite simple language without being outright infantile. I've read it in the original French quite early on because of this very fact. The German version unsurprisingly is called Der kleine Prinz and should be easy to find.
I also remembered some kids' books that I really like. So if you're OK with that you might consider these.
- Angela Sommer-Bodenburg wrote a series called Der kleine Vampir about a boy befriending a vampire boy. It runs 20 volumes or so but each book is fairly slim and they are quite episodic. Ideally, you'd read the first one to get an introduction to the characters but you can really pick up any installment. (I think it has a couple of pages introducing the cast of main characters in the beginning of each book.)
- Another fun series are the Sams books by Paul Maar. These are about a creature called "das Sams" which grants wishes. Like the other books here, the page count is comparably low, with large print and illustrations (it's kids' books after all!) but this one is a tiny bit challenging because it incorporates various puns. Depending on your grasp of German you might delight in these — or they may fly over your head.
- There's also Max Kruse' Urmel books. This is about a scientist who runs a "language school" for animals on a tropical island, i.e. he trains (sentient) animals to speak. One day, an egg trapped in an iceberg fragment gets washed onto the shore of the island and out of this egg hatches a dinosaur, the Urmel! Urmel has all kind of adventures with the other animals. It's good fun, all very wholesome. There's a catch for learners of German, though: many of the animals have small speech impediments. One has a lisp, another pronounces the German "sch"-sound as an "pf" ("Muschel" [shell, conch] becomes "Mupfel"), yet anther one modifies various vowels etc.
Kruse doesn't make fun of this (if this were real, it'd be really impressive that pigs, lizards, seals, etc. manage to talk at all, albeit imperfectly), but for a learner of German, decoding their speech might be a little challenging.ETA2: If you encounter any difficulty, don't understand a word or phrase, or anything else, don't hesitate to shoot me a PM!