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No one can do anything right for Helene’s father. ‘My egg is too runny!’, ‘I’m thirsty!’, ‘Who left their shoes lying around in the hall?’ He keeps the entire cat family on edge with his angry outbursts. Helene lives with her parents and her little brother in a remote house in a lonely valley. She can practise her trumpet to her heart’s content, and she gets on really well with her mother and her brother; the only problem is her father, for his constant rages mean that she never gets any peace.
Sensing her daughter’s dismay, Helene’s mother explains to her one day that her father is a ‘Loudmouth’ — but she wants more information. ‘How do you become a Loudmouth?’, she asks, but she doesn’t like the answer she gets: ‘Dad’s parents were Loudmouths, and his grandfather was a well-known Loudmouth. It’s been the same for generations ... nothing but Loudmouth s in their family! If you like, you can be a Loudmouth too when you’re older!’
This gives Helene pause for thought, for under no circumstances whatsoever does she want to turn out like her father. She thinks it over for a while, then makes a decision: she packs her case, including her trumpet, and leaves the valley that has always been her home. Up on the mountain she sees a little house that she likes the look of. She knocks on the door, a woman opens it, and when she explains that her father is a Loudmouth she is welcomed with open arms.
Back at the family home, meanwhile, the Loudmouth has gone all quiet. ‘If Helene would only come back, I’ll never shout again’, he thinks to himself as he, his wife and his son join in a feverish but fruitless search for his daughter. After a while he comes across a sign of life from her after all. In the woods he sees a poster headed ‘Concert’, bearing a splendid big picture of his daughter and her trumpet. Needless to say, wild horses wouldn’t stop Helene’s family from attending her first major appearance as a trumpet-player. And when Helene hears her father’s bellows of approval ring out above the enthusiastic applause of the audience, they fill her with delight for once...
Der Krakeeler (‘The Loudmouth’) tells the story of the remarkable emancipation of a young girl who is strong-minded enough to go her own way. The conflict dealt with in this picture book is doubtless a familiar feature in the daily life of many families: parents thoughtlessly give rein to their own moods and personal problems within the family context, without realising that this threatens the fragile structure of family life, the harmonious functioning of which is indispensable to children. In the end children often have no alternative but to put up with the bad atmosphere prevailing in the household despite the distress it causes them.
Not Helene! She manages to distance herself from her father, and to recognise that she doesn’t want to live her life this way. With great self-assurance she decides to break free from her predicament and seek her own salvation elsewhere — i.e. in some place that enables her to meet her own needs and develop her own talents. Given the protagonist’s tender age, this scenario is of course not ‘realistic’ — but nor is it meant to be. Helene’s course of action is presented as exemplary, and her story, recounted laconically yet also sensitively, can certainly stand as a model, and serve to give encouragement to youngsters whilst also making parents more aware of the issues it deals with.
At the same time, it is the book’s great strength that it doesn’t heap blame on anyone. The characters are depicted with great empathy, and it is easy to put onself in their shoes — even the father’s, who simply can’t help being the way he is, but loves his daughter all the same. The ‘message’ of the book is thus not flashed up in neon lights, but is conveyed unobtrusively and without any finger-wagging.
In this moral tale about a courageous girl, Waechter’s affectionate, large-scale drawings form an equal partnership with Moni Port’s precise, sensitive sentences depicting the young protagonist’s calm resolve. The illustrations effectively reinforce this aspect of the story — but when the father does his shouting, the drawings go haywire as well: the images are no longer characterised by colour and mood, but instead reflect the truncated utterances and dictates of the angry Loudmouth. Once Helene has quit the family and the father is overcome with remorse, calm also returns to the drawings.
With its congenial interplay of text, image and theme and its direct relevance to the real world, this book — well suited, as it is, to being read conjointly with a child or read out loud — is not only a lot of fun, but in its own quiet way is also capable of teaching us a lot about ourselves.
Eva Kaufmann
Dezember 2010
[Translated by Helena Ragg-Kirkby]
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