De Klenge Prënz - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This was a significant read for me as it was the first book I'd attempted to read in Luxembourgish (other than picture books I'd read for the children).  I'd selected it as it was short and familiar (I'd enjoyed it in English when much younger) but I did find it a bit of a struggle in places - certainly significantly harder than reading in German - and there were several passages that I had to go over two or three times to get the meaning of them.  I did make it to the end though, learning a few new words along the way, and I even understood enough to feel quite emotional at the end of the afterword, when the narrator speaks of his sadness and asks the readers to tell him if the prince returns.  As I've been thinking a lot recently about drawing, and how people learn to draw and gain or lose confidence in their abilities, I was also quite struck by the repeated mentions of how the narrator stopped drawing as a six year old due to the poor response of adults to whom he showed his first efforts, and by his decision to take it up again as an adult so that he could create pictures to help him remember his friend.

Als Hitler das rosa Kaninchen stahl - Judith Kerr

I'd long been intrigued by the English title of this book (When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit) in a list of other works by the author in our well-loved copy of The Tiger Who Came to Tea, so when I came across this translation in the library it seemed like a good opportunity to find out more while practising my German.  I found the story rather eye-opening, as it presents an account of the threats and hardships of being one of the 'lucky' ones who escaped before the Nazis came to power.  The engaging and upbeat narrator was very likeable, particularly her rather endearing conclusion that she will probably never become famous because her experiences as a refugee, which she describes as interesting and sometimes funny despite their challenges, do not qualify as a difficult childhood because she has been able to stay together with her family.  I also really enjoyed the experience of reading it in German - although it was originally written in English, the experiences she describes begin in Germany and often focus on the fact of German being the family's native language, so it felt very natural to be reading it this way.  I also had a strange moment of realisation after enjoying a passage in which Anna suddenly discovers that she has learned to speak French fluently without needing to mentally translate back and forth into German.  I paused for a moment to wistfully imagine how wonderful it would be to be fluent in another language, only to catch myself and notice that I was quite happily reading in one...  I'd also like to record here a conversation between Anna and her father that resonated with me (particularly on behalf of my children, who have moved between countries early in their lives): "Glaubst du, dass wir jemals irgendwo richtig hingehören werden?" "Ich glaube nicht", sagte Papa, "nicht so, wie die Menschen irgendwo hingehören, die ihr Leben lang an einem Ort gewohnt haben. Aber wir werden zu vielen Orten ein wenig gehören, und ich glaube, das kann ebenso gut sein."

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman

In this retelling of the gospel story (which is also a fascinating exploration of how and why such stories come to be written) "Jesus" and "Christ" are two separate characters: twins, who embody different kinds of religious faith and have very different ideas about how to do God's work.  I remember being very impressed a few years ago by David Boulton's "Who on Earth Was Jesus?", which emphasises the distinction between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith", and I liked the way that this idea was humanised and explored in this story, as Jesus simply speaks from his beliefs, while Christ, the chronicler of these events, is persuaded by a mysterious stranger that the Kingdom of God can be brought about by "writing about things as they should have been" and "letting truth into history".  This leads to reversals such as Jesus's encounter with Mary and Martha, where he actually tells Mary to "go and help your sister", but Christ feels that this was "another of those sayings of Jesus that would be better as truth than as history".  The way that events are embellished into myths is also nicely illustrated by Christ's encounter with Thomas after Jesus's death, where the people present are persuaded of the resurrection without seeing wounds from the crucifixion, but soon the "vivid and unforgettable" story of Thomas touching the wounds becomes widespread.  I was also struck by Christ's final thoughts on the allure of storytelling, as he reflects on the morality of the newly formed church and his part in its creation, and concludes that he still wants to be involved in creating a record of Jesus's life so that he can "knot the details together neatly to make patterns and show correspondences, and if they weren't there in life, I want to put them there in the story for no other reason than to make a better story".