Carl Behr - essayist for November 2025 print issue
After five household moves over 90-plus years, my childhood library is still with me.
There’s A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Gingerbread Man as retold by Violet Moore Higgins, La-La Man in Musicland by Colleen Browne Kilner, Greek Tales for Tiny Tots by John and Pauline Crawford, and Struwwelpeter by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann.
Of all the time I spent relishing the stories while on my mother’s or father’s lap or alone in my bedroom, while recuperating from chicken pox or croup, Struwwelpeter wins hands down, although not to discount the lasting impact of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, or the sickly boy in Stevenson’s poem who marched his tin soldiers among the hills and valleys of his bed sheets and pillows.
Just why the tale of Struwwelpeter has captured the imagination of young readers since its publication in 1845 is perhaps due to its unique, bold style, combining rhyming poetry, dark humor, and in some instances, gruesome graphics of children misbehaving. The book has become a classic in children’s literature, said to be the second most translated German story next to Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Aside from the colorful and exaggerated charm of the graphics, the remarkable thing about the translation is that it rhymes in both English and German throughout the entire book. So impressed, I called upon my dear UK friend, now living in Germany, to ask who did the translation of the rhyming poetry and when. Within days, the answer, direct from the Struwwelpeter Museum in Frankfurt was: “We’re not sure, probably someone from the UK years ago.”
The book follows such individual miscreants as Peter, who refuses to cut his hair or nails, and Cruel Frederick, who whips his pet dog Tray; Johnny Head-in-Air who almost drowns; Fidgety Phillip who ruins dinner; Harriet who died playing with matches; and August, who died for not eating soup. It can seem grim, but — unless I miss the point of the tale of Great Agrippa and the ink well — the lesson is to respect other human beings.
The story-board style of these tales draws young readers in, almost like daytime television. In fact, Disney and Struwwelpeter could be a winning combination, if only to do something about his name… Scruwedup Peter?
Marjorie, my mother-in-law, grew up in a small town in Iowa; married a man from a small town in Illinois; raised a family in Scarsdale, New York; and years later returned to central Illinois.
During the years in Scarsdale, she and her book-publishing husband built an Italianate-style home, experienced the arts, music and book clubs, all while raising a son and daughter in a wealthy suburb with an advanced school system. It’s no wonder that Marjorie became a grammarian and infused her daughter, my wife, with the use of proper English, while never losing the balance with small town values. I was crazy about her because, as far as I could tell, she thought it was okay for me to marry her daughter in spite of my low-brow, Midwest upbringing.
“Chickens lay eggs, people lie down” was drilled into our kids’ minds at an early age. So was: “He and I went to the store” instead of “me and him went to the store”— although in changing times one wonders if we are overwrought about the niceties of written and verbal speech.
The most amusing and instructive source of good grammar I’ve found is a small book, Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. It’s written by Mary Norris, a resident of Cleveland, Ohio, who grew up driving a dairy delivery truck to earn money, and in time became a copy editor at The New Yorker magazine. From a chapter on the use of commas to the problem of dangling participles, and the definition of transitive verbs to a frank discussion of obscenities in literature and speech, Norris brings subjects such as punctuation into new realms, citing the semicolon as being “upper crust” and calling the serial comma an “Oxford comma” ( to add a bit of class). The book deals with issues that arise between author and copy desk over punctuation, spelling and clarity of meaning, and the need to preserve an author’s intent and voice.
She treats with gentle humor the subject of pronouns, admitting to the trouble she had getting it right when her sister, Dee, transitioned.
In the chapter about obscenities and their rise in popular art (“in some ways, it’s a beautiful thing”), she recalls the hilarious scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Robert Redford’s Sundance Kid, a non-swimmer, jumps over the cliff to the river below, yelling SHHHHHIIIIIIIIITTTT (her transliteration), all the way down.
All in all, the book is unpretentious about good grammar and the author comes through as a delightful teacher.
Norris brings up many good points, one of which is that usage is always changing, which makes it difficult for printed dictionaries to keep up.
I recently considered saying goodbye to my New Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
You’re 42 years old, copyright 1981. You were at my side when I recently needed to use “cornhole.” Does it need a hyphen? Is it two words? It says it’s a game with bean bags on a board with a hole. No hyphen. Very satisfactory.
But what if I wanted to learn about ChatGPT or PFAS or brain tangles? Wikipedia, I believe, will be my new friend.
Webster’s will always have a place in my heart. I love the story of Leo Burnett, the founder of the famous advertising firm, going on vacation with his dictionary, sitting under a shade tree, discovering the word “gusto,” defined as a special pleasure or taste. Sure enough, Schlitz Beer, one of his clients in the 1960s was eventually advertised with the slogan: “Go for the gusto, go for Schlitz.”
I’m a little worried about Wikipedia being online, though. What will the AI gods do about my looking up “horehound” if I’m interested in the confection industry? Will they accommodate me with phone numbers for ladies of the night? I recently consulted my old friend, Webster, for “footprint” and was greeted with stunning choices:
footpath
footnote
footrace
footrot
footstep
footstool
Not sure Wiki would do that.
In the end, I guess I’ll keep old Webster’s and learn to give Wiki a wink.
Carl Behr spent a career in advertising in Chicago. During a work stint in Germany he toured around Europe with his young family in a VW bus. A resident of Madison’s Attic Angel community, he turns 100 in December.
