Three Children Book in the German Language I've Enjoyed this Week

I've promised myself at the end of 2017 to push myself to read and write more in German, because regardless how advanced you consider yourself with your German skills, it will never ever be enough to be considered a fluent human being. As children books are for me my best way to grasp a language, I've had this Tuesday an intensive hour while I sit on a Flatboy, with the baby near me, and kept reading and reading some children books. Not all of them where originally written in German - actually only one out of the three I am about to recommend - but I liked the translations and enjoyed the rich vocabulary. The best challenge was for me to translate most of them to the baby into English, which was, as I expected, a great brain exercise I passed successfully. 

Besides the gorgeous illustrations, very illustrative and aesthetic, is the text which was very attractive, explaining in simple words animal behavior and details about the animal life in general. The images and the text compliments each other perfectly helping the little reader to understand and learn so much about a variety of animals, of the sort that you rather encounter in real life, outside zoos.

Recommended to relatively bigger children, that are already taking art classes at school, the book has a succession of images where famous paintings do replace the human element with a monkey. You can use it either as a test of the general knowledge of the history of art, or as an exercise of flexibility. After all, everything is relative and you can always re-write/re-paint classical works using your imagination.

Fitzek can be considered the German Stephen King, but after reading some of his hair-raising psychological thrillers, you realize that he is going even further as he is magnifying fears and psychological depths creating novels that you can hardly forget. (Note to self, read more Fitzek this year, because his German is also challenging.) Pupsi&Stinki is a children book he wrote, where the suspense is in the air, but it ends up well, with a lesson about difference and acceptance. With a note of horror, in the low-level children register, as Pupsi is a child who poops non-stop therefore his bad reputation among his kindergarten peers. The story is a bit too long, but it is really enough to create a special ambiance of horror and fear created by the marginalization and bullying. The book is available in audio-format, but my copy was a physical book.