Reviews for The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

The average rating for The Wonderful Adventures of Nils based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-24 00:00:00 Brandon Cocke Cross-curricular teaching and entertainment in one Nobel volume. These days, interdisciplinary projects and cross-curricular interlinking of learning are all the fashion, and stressed teachers sigh in frustration over the tour de force of teaching not only their own subject, but of successfully implementing relevant connections to other areas as well in order to make learning more meaningful to an increasingly lazy, naughty and careless student body. Some might think this is a recent issue - both the emphasis on interdisciplinary learning, and the hopeless attitude of our youth. Think again - or read Selma Lagerlöf, and you will be pleased to discover that: a) your interdisciplinary project combining a learning unit in geography, biology, history, literature, ethics, Nordic mythology and life skills is offered to you on a Nobel silver plate. b) students have been lazy, naughty and prone to falling asleep over their chores or homework at least since 1906, when this novel was written to be used in the Swedish school system. Following young Nils Holgersson on his magical journey through the various landscapes of Sweden is a special experience, as it combines features of a fairy tale adventure with genuine geography and biology knowledge. Nils is cursed by a Swedish house spirit, a"tomte", for his cruel and treacherous behaviour, and is turned into a a tiny "tomte" himself. Deprived of his physical superiority, he faces the animals on his parents' farm, whom he has treated in a particularly nasty way. He discovers that he has received the ability to understand their communication as a compensation for his lost power, and he has to hear some unpleasant opinions about himself, as well as protect himself against the mistreated animals' righteous anger. Fleeing the farm on the back of a goose, he travels through all of Sweden. The journey widens his perspective and broadens his mind, and the hardship he faces makes him grow as a human being, - despite or because of his tiny size. He learns to respect nature and living creatures by slowly gaining deeper understanding of the diversity of lifeforms in Sweden. He returns home more caring and knowledgeable, and vows to be a better leader of the environment for which he is responsible. The curse is gone, and he resumes his human shape. Apart from the purely subject-related content, offering a panorama of Swedish flora and fauna, it is a universal story of power and responsibility, and of the importance of knowledge to develop empathy. To respect others, you need to know about their situation, and about their needs and feelings and customs. Recommended to teachers, students and learners for life!

Review # 2 was written on 2016-04-15 00:00:00 Benjamin Beauregard This children's classic, published in 1906 by future Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, is so famous in Scandinavia that everyone knows the plot; but until now I'd never read it. Nils Holgersson, a good-for-nothing kid in late nineteenth century Skåne, angers the local tomte (a kind of Swedish leprechaun), who magically transforms him into another tomte. Nils, who's now the size of a thumb, is fortunately adopted by a flock of geese who take him to their summer nesting grounds in Lapland and back again. En route, they conveniently traverse all of Sweden, giving the author ample opportunity for an extended series of geography lessons. It sounded dull, but I was pleased to discover that in fact it's nothing of the kind. The geography is always firmly in the service of the narrative, the lead characters are well drawn, and the style is moving and poetic. But what surprised me most was that I'd never heard how it came to be written. According to the introduction, the author's original inspiration was a terrible story she had heard from her grandmother about an incident that had occurred when the grandmother was herself a little girl. There was a white goose on the farm, and one spring day he took it into his head to fly off with a flock of wild geese who were passing by. The family was of course sure they would never see him again. But many months later, Selma's grandmother was astonished to see that the goose had returned. And he was not alone; during the summer, he had found a mate, a beautiful grey goose, and they were accompanied by half a dozen little goslings. Delighted, Selma's grandmother led the goose family to the barn, where they could eat from the trough with the other fowl. She closed the door so that they wouldn't fly off again, and ran to tell her stepmother. The stepmother said nothing. She just took out the little knife she used for slaughtering geese; and an hour later there was not one goose left alive in the barn. For me, this resonated with what many other people also find the most memorable episode in the book. One night, Nils is woken by a stork, who says that if he follows him he will show him something important. They fly to the seashore, where there is a strange city, quite unlike anything one would expect to find on the Swedish coast. Nils goes in through the huge gate and discovers people dressed in rich clothes from a bygone age. No one seems to notice him at first. He finds his way to the merchants' quarter. People are selling all kinds of precious goods: embroidered silks and satins, gold ornaments, glittering jewels. And now he realizes that the merchants can see him. They are holding out their wares to him, offering all these treasures. Nils tries to make them understand that he could never afford any of it, he is a poor boy. But they persist, and using gestures tell him that he can have anything he wants, if he can just give them one small copper coin. He searches his pockets over and over again but finds they are empty. In the end, he leaves the city, and when he turns round again it has disappeared. "It is the lost city of the sea traders," explains the stork. "They were drowned beneath the waves long ago, but once every hundred years they come back for a single night. The legend is that if they can sell a single thing to a mortal, they will be allowed to return to the world; but they never do." Nils feels his heart is going to break. He could so easily have saved all these good people and their city, but he has failed them. It seemed to me that both stories expressed the same feeling with quite unusual clarity. If only...