'Gadzooks!' said Dot ...'The things that boy can do!'
Dot loves play-acting, dressing up her pet dachshund Piefke and making up words like 'splentastic'. Her best friend is Anton, who lives in a little apartment and looks after his mother. They share a secret - every night, when their parents think they are asleep, they sell matches and shoelaces on the streets of Berlin with Dot's grumpy governess. But why? The answers involve a villain called 'Robert the Devil', a club-wielding maid, a wobbly tooth, a pair of silver shoes and a policeman dancing the tango.
[Erich Kastner] has a way of being very funny while also making a serious point Irish Times
Dot is a delightful creation... A child reader will adore the pug dogs and cream cakes and Christmas lights, all winningly illustrated by Walter Trier-the Quentin Blake to Kastner's Roald Dahl. An adult, though, will see behind the pigtails and street chases, to signs of a Germany which had lost track of morality and reason Standpoint magazine
Full to the brim with memorable characters... The bold line drawings by Walter Trier enhance the story wonderfully... Nearly a century later the messages of courage, pride, respect and friendship remain equally relevant today Children's Books Ireland
Author
About Erich Kastner, Nathan Burton
Erich Kastner,writer, poet and journalist, was born in Dresden in 1899. His first children's book, Emil and the Detectives, was published in 1929 and has since sold millions of copies around the world and been translated into around 60 languages. After the Nazis took power in Germany, Kastner's books were burnt and he was excluded from the writers' guild. He won many awards, including the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1960. He died in 1974.
