Product Description
Zettelwitz the Table Mountain Wizard
A prankster and a fanatical collector of the letters from A-Z
An exercise in uncommon words
painted and written by
Rosemarie Breuer
Translated from German by Alison Kirkland and the author
With 50 birds of the Western Cape in South Africa by
Jill Adams
Zettelwitz the Wizard is a prankster and a fanatical collector of all sorts of things. This time he decides to transform creatures and objects into their capital letters to obtain the whole alphabet. Magic rules require that his prey somehow resemble the letter. He doesn't get away with it very easily, some of his victims put up a fight. They chase him and catch him, but he manages to escape more than once. Zettelwitz is in love with beautiful Ronja. When he experiences her wrath, he decides to change his ways and impress her with some useful magic.
Children will enjoy the rhymes and play on words. You are doing them a favour by reading them texts, which include some unusual vocabulary.
I have read Zettelwitz with interest and enjoyment - the concept is original, and it is executed wittily and inventively. I should think that children would find it both entertaining and instructive.
Michiel Heyns
It's really great. The theme is original, the story exciting and the whole work can be appreciated on many different levels (a characteristic of great literature!)
Sinclair Wynchank
A new unique, imaginative and educational children's book. It has been written with a play on words, and provides a page for every letter of the alphabet.
Geraldine Mitton
I found the text charming and original - well done!
Marita van der Vyver
I read your book last night - so imaginative, fanciful, original, artistic AND instructive! You are very clever! CONGRATULATIONS!
Anny Wynchank
Zettelwitz is a thoroughly good idea - a language created before your very eyes and ears! The book takes the reader on a magical learning-tour through the alphabet... It is easy to see why Zettelwitz is so instantly accessible and warmly human. Here is all the joyous exuberance of creation as well as a prankish sense of humour.
Brian Green
Review by: b. k. green
Zettelwitz is a thoroughly good idea - a language created before your very eyes and ears! The book takes the reader on a magical learning-tour through the alphabet with an aha experience each time a capital letter assumes its conventional shape.
It is easy to see why Zettelwitz is so instantly accessible and warmly human. Here is all the joyous exuberance of creation as well as a prankish sense of humour in the use of personal names and personalities. For me, the real magic was in the way the words conjured up the spirit of the Wizard himself. What immediately struck me was the seemingly inexhaustible proliferation of new partnerships between words with the same initial letter or with a terminal echo of one another. These ingenious alliterations and rhymes - two of the most reliable mnemonic devices in all Indo-European languages - inform the "plot" and impel it forward.
Add to all this inventiveness the tried and tested memory technique of association - achieved here through character drawings and exquisite illustrations of local birds - and the book cannot be anything but unforgettable.
Verbally exhilarating, thematically fascinating, and pictorially fulfilling, Zettelwitz is educationally delicious. I recommend it in generous helpings for English-speaking parents and teachers; also for beginners in German, (especially adults!). And, of course, for German-speaking tourists on holiday in the Cape with their children, Zettelwitz would be the ideal diversion.
A prankster and a fanatical collector of the letters from A-Z
An exercise in uncommon words
painted and written by
Rosemarie Breuer
Translated from German by Alison Kirkland and the author
With 50 birds of the Western Cape in South Africa by
Jill Adams
Zettelwitz the Wizard is a prankster and a fanatical collector of all sorts of things. This time he decides to transform creatures and objects into their capital letters to obtain the whole alphabet. Magic rules require that his prey somehow resemble the letter. He doesn't get away with it very easily, some of his victims put up a fight. They chase him and catch him, but he manages to escape more than once. Zettelwitz is in love with beautiful Ronja. When he experiences her wrath, he decides to change his ways and impress her with some useful magic.
Children will enjoy the rhymes and play on words. You are doing them a favour by reading them texts, which include some unusual vocabulary.
I have read Zettelwitz with interest and enjoyment - the concept is original, and it is executed wittily and inventively. I should think that children would find it both entertaining and instructive.
Michiel Heyns
It's really great. The theme is original, the story exciting and the whole work can be appreciated on many different levels (a characteristic of great literature!)
Sinclair Wynchank
A new unique, imaginative and educational children's book. It has been written with a play on words, and provides a page for every letter of the alphabet.
Geraldine Mitton
I found the text charming and original - well done!
Marita van der Vyver
I read your book last night - so imaginative, fanciful, original, artistic AND instructive! You are very clever! CONGRATULATIONS!
Anny Wynchank
Zettelwitz is a thoroughly good idea - a language created before your very eyes and ears! The book takes the reader on a magical learning-tour through the alphabet... It is easy to see why Zettelwitz is so instantly accessible and warmly human. Here is all the joyous exuberance of creation as well as a prankish sense of humour.
Brian Green
Review by: b. k. green
Zettelwitz is a thoroughly good idea - a language created before your very eyes and ears! The book takes the reader on a magical learning-tour through the alphabet with an aha experience each time a capital letter assumes its conventional shape.
It is easy to see why Zettelwitz is so instantly accessible and warmly human. Here is all the joyous exuberance of creation as well as a prankish sense of humour in the use of personal names and personalities. For me, the real magic was in the way the words conjured up the spirit of the Wizard himself. What immediately struck me was the seemingly inexhaustible proliferation of new partnerships between words with the same initial letter or with a terminal echo of one another. These ingenious alliterations and rhymes - two of the most reliable mnemonic devices in all Indo-European languages - inform the "plot" and impel it forward.
Add to all this inventiveness the tried and tested memory technique of association - achieved here through character drawings and exquisite illustrations of local birds - and the book cannot be anything but unforgettable.
Verbally exhilarating, thematically fascinating, and pictorially fulfilling, Zettelwitz is educationally delicious. I recommend it in generous helpings for English-speaking parents and teachers; also for beginners in German, (especially adults!). And, of course, for German-speaking tourists on holiday in the Cape with their children, Zettelwitz would be the ideal diversion.
