Janusz Korczak was a physician, children's
writer and educator in Poland and a staunch defender of children's
rights in the early part of the last century. His most popular
children's novel, King Matt the First, was initially
published in 1923 and soon became as well-known in Poland as
J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. It unjustly fell into anonymity
after the war and, eventually, out of print. Last published
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1988, Algonquin Books of Chapel
Hill has graciously crafted an attractive new edition that,
one hopes, will reintroduce this wonderful fable to the world.
When young Prince Matt's father dies, he
suddenly becomes ruler of a small European country. His tiny,
landlocked country's three neighbors take advantage of the situation
and declare war, and Matt sneaks out of the palace with his
friend Felek to join the army on the front lines. Once there,
he becomes quickly acquainted with the harsh realities of modern
war. "Oh, what a foolhardy child I was," he thinks.
"All I thought about was leaving the capital on a white
horse while the people threw flowers at me. But I wasn't thinking
how many people would be killed."
Thanks to a valiant mission across enemy
lines and his War Minister's strategies, Matt's army deflects
the invaders in the end returns to the capital a hero. But his
country is in serious trouble. Since Matt has too generously
neglected to demand reparations from his conquered foes, he
soon turns to them for loans to help in the reconstruction of
his battered kingdom. Visiting each of the three king's capitals,
he becomes friendly with a sad king who had only reluctantly
participated in the invasion and falls in love with the sad
king's zoo.
Matt returns to his own capital and demands
from his ministers a series of reforms for the children of his
country: to build summer camps for all the children, to supply
all the schools with seesaws and merry-go-rounds, and to construct
a zoo in the capital with cages for all sorts of exotic creatures.
But the money lent by his neighbors has already been spoken
for, so he takes out a second loan from the sad king in order
to establish his zoo. Matt meets with traders from various countries
with animals for sale, but one envoy from the land of the cannibals,
whose king has all the animals Matt's zoo requires, makes him
an especially exciting offer. This African king has no need
for money, as he has mountains of gold already; he simply wants
Matt to visit his country.
Against his ministers' wishes, Matt goes
to Africa and becomes great friends with King Bum Drum and his
daughter Klu Klu. King Bum Drum sends Matt home with all the
riches he can carry, and they make arrangements to have the
animals for his zoo sent in three months' time. Back at home,
Matt concocts another wave of reforms more grand in scope than
any before it, chiefly the establishment of a children's parliament
and a children's newspaper. But while Matt is preoccupied with
affairs of state, a spy is planting the seeds of Matt's undoing....
Not all of Matt's reforms are as successful
as he had hoped, however. The summer camps turned out to be
a poorly managed mess which many of the children didn't enjoy
at all, and a children's parliament he establishes ends up as
little more than a forum for the delegates to make trivial,
even impossible demands such as the abolition of girls and little
children.
This pattern repeats itself throughout the
book: King Matt has ever more sweeping, yet naive ideas about
how to reform his government, but the practicalities soon settle
in and force Matt to alter his approach. Despite this, King
Matt is never condescending, unlike so many children's
books today by adults who think of children as small idiots.
Quite the opposite, Korczak understands children remarkably
well, writing in a poetic tone reminiscent of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's
timeless The Little Prince, which it predates by 20
years.
While the portrayal of many of the Africans
in the book is unsettling by today's PC standards, it is certainly
no more troubling than that of the Indians in Peter Pan.
And as Esmé Raji Codell recounts in her introduction,
To be fair, Klu Klu, the African princess
who becomes King Matt's closest and most faithful friend, stands
as one of the book's strongest, most intelligent and capable
characters, and even affords her opportunities to comment on
"stupid European etiquette" and describe the Europeans
as "barbaric" in how they wear clothes on their feet
and dress their boys and girls differently. In fact, much of
the book's most biting commentary about European culture comes
from Klu Klu's mouth. As
Korczak himself answered to a girl who asked him why Klu
Klu was black, not white, "Children are black in Klu Klu's
part of the world, just as the children I saw in China were
yellow. But it doesn't make any difference what color you are.
Klu Klu was much smarter than a lot of the white children in
Matt's kingdom -- and she remained faithful to him when he was
attacked by others."
The fact that King Matt ends up deposed is
irrelevant, however strange that may seem. He and his friends
stick together to the last. While he made many mistakes in his
brief reign, he learned from each of them, and he ends the book
as a wiser king than he was before, albeit a king without a
kingdom. Despite its unusually pessimistic, downbeat ending,
King Matt the First certainly leaves you wondering
that all-important question: what happens next? But unfortunately,
its sequel, King Matt on the Desert Island, is still
out of print. With any luck -- not to mention sales -- Alogonquin
Books of Chapel Hill will remedy that problem soon.
King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
ISBN 1-56512-442-1
352 pages
