Shock-Headed Peter: In Latin-English-German

The cast of characters from Lemony Snicket, Edward Gorey, Roald Dahl, and even Charles Dickens meet their matches in Heinrich Hoffmann’s Shock-Headed Peter. The cameos of the ill-kempt Peter and his ilk are reminiscent of their near contemporaries, the unexpurgated Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “Right” and “Wrong” are clearly delineated, and “Just Deserts” are swift and sure.

To our precariously balanced world, where shifting sensibilities lurchingly guide expression and conduct, Shock-Headed Peter is remnant of a past where things are tongue-in-cheek simple, where the recalcitrant child or cruel adult gets his or her comeuppance. Better yet, there’s no waiting for the wheels of justice to grind slowly: there’s an “exceedingly fine,” excruciatingly apropos resolution in fast-forward time.

Let the reader be forewarned – not for the delicately inclined – one will herein find the stories of:
* Shock-Headed Peter (crusty kid incarnate)
* Cruel Frederick (dog abuse “bites” the dust)
* Harriet and the Matches (cat duo predicts pyromaniac girl’s demise)
* The Inky Boys (bigoted taunters finally get the tint)
* The Man That Went Out Shooting (twisted rabbit rampage)
* Little Suck-A-Thumb (tailor with scissors-enough said)
* Augustus, Who Would not Have Any Soup (the perils of the starvation diet)
* Fidgety Philip (family “quality time” with an antsy pants)
* Johnny Head-In-Air (A.D.D. boy takes long walk of short pier)
* Flying Robert (puddle-jumper in Poppinsesque flight)

This edition includes Latin, English and German translations of each tale.

– Stylistically elegant, rhyming Latin translation, accessible to the non-scholarly reader- Facing page original German text and popular English translation- Hoffmann’s original color illustrations, plus detailed enlargements of them- Appendix with new, never before published contemporary English translation, Scruffypete, by Ann Elizabeth Wild- Afterword by Walter Sauer, on the history of the work and its Latin translations- Select Latin-English glossary