Young City Reads

Brighton Festival’s guest artistic director for 2013, Michael Rosen, championed his favourite children’s classic Emil And The Detectives in a 2004 Guardian column, having first read it at primary school in 1955.

His choice has inspired the first Young City Reads, which launches on Thursday.

“We have had the idea on the shelf ready to go for a while,” says City Reads director Sarah Hutchings.

“When Michael was chosen as guest artistic director it seemed perfect serendipity to unveil our plans.”

Hutchings suggested the idea to Rosen after reading Erich Kästner’s book herself for the first time.

“I couldn’t put it down,” she says. “I read it in one sitting. It’s a real rites of passage story.”

The book was revolutionary for its time, both in its use of cut-away line drawings to support the action of the narrative, and its hero’s background.

In the caption below the reader’s first sight of Emil they are told, “First of all, here is Emil himself. He is wearing his dark blue Sunday suit. He is not keen about it.”

“Emil is a fantastic hero – you empathise with him and his struggles,” says Hutchings.

“He comes from a one-parent family, as his father died when he was five. He lives with his mother and they don’t have very much money.”

That need to live within their means in their provincial German town is key, as at the start of the story Emil is instructed to take 120 Deutschmarks to his grandmother, which his mother has saved from her wages. Unfortunately, on the train to Berlin Emil encounters a smooth conman who drugs Emil and takes his money.

Rather than report the theft to his grandmother or the police, Emil decides to get the money back himself, with the help of a band of boys gathered together from across the city.

When Hitler came to power, the Nazis branded Kästner’s book anti-German and burned it – with the author himself looking on.

“Perhaps it was because they felt it was so ground-breaking and out of the ordinary,” says Hutchings. “The book is also about co-operation and working together to achieve a goal – perhaps it was seen as subversive.”

At the time of writing, 16 city primary schools had signed up for the YCR project.

They will receive weekly email bulletins suggesting classroom activities and asking questions connected to the story, with some receiving full sets of books on a means-tested basis. Unlike the main City Reads event, copies of the book won’t be given out in the centre of Brighton.

Anyone wanting to follow at home with their children or grandchildren will be able to see the bulletins on the City Reads website at cityreads.co.uk.

What is important, though, is that as Emil And The Detectives is a book in translation, everyone should read the same Vintage Classics version.

“The original book has been translated into 60 different languages,” says Hutchings. “One thing Michael told me, which wouldn’t be apparent in translation, is that Emil has his own distinct accent in the original book – almost the equivalent of coming from Cornwall in the UK.”

The project will culminate with a special Brighton Festival event at Theatre Royal Brighton led by Rosen himself on Friday, May 24, as part of the 26 Letters strand.

During the festival, the Duke Of York’s Picturehouse, in Preston Circus, will host screenings of the 1935 UK film version of the book on Sunday, May 12, and the Ealing comedy Hue And Cry on Sunday, May 19, which sees another group of youngsters trap a criminal mastermind.

Although this is a pilot event, it is hoped that Young City Reads will return for future years.

And it hasn’t replaced the grown-up City Reads, which is back in the autumn.

“What keeps me going is that I love reading,” says Hutchings. “City Reads is all about sharing that passion and inspiring people. Anybody can join in.”

• Young City Reads takes place across Brighton from Thursday, March 7, to Friday, May 24. For more information, visit www.cityreads.co.uk