Max and Maurice: A Juvenile History in Seven Tricks
Translated by Charles Timothy Brooks
Two boys. Seven tricks. No mercy. Max and Maurice are not your ordinary troublemakers. They are artists of anarchy, masters of mischief whose every prank spirals into spectacular catastrophe. In this 1865 German classic, Wilhelm Busch crafted something revolutionary: a children's book that refuses to soften its edges, where consequences arrive with shocking finality. From stealing a widow's chickens through her chimney to feeding their teacher gunpowder in his pipe, each trick is more audacious than the last. The townsfolk suffer, the boys laugh, and then, justice arrives with a grim wink. Written in sparkling rhymed couplets and illustrated with Busch's wickedly funny drawings, this is a cautionary tale wrapped in a comedy of errors. It has been read and beloved by generations of German children, who recognize something true in Max and Maurice's gleeful defiance. For anyone who ever delighted in a well-executed trick, or remembers what it felt like to be small and absolutely certain the rules didn't apply to them.
