Secure Your Copy Kreuzzug In Jeans Designed By Thea Beckman Made Available In Publication Copy

van mijn favoriete boeken, Thea weet als geen ander je mee te nemen naar een andere tijd, Je ziet het in wezen voor je, Dit is een boek wat ik denk ik iederejaar weer lees, De kinderen vinden hem ook geweldig, Het is een van de weinige boeken waar ik meerdere edities van heb, Dolf die denkt voor een middagje naar de Middeleeuwen te gaan wordt meegenomen in een enorm avontuur, De wetenschappers kunnen hem namelijk niet terug halen naar de huidige tijd, Dolf ervaart wat het is om met een kinder kruistocht mee te gaan in de middeleeuwen, Slimheid, vriendschap en vernuft helpt hem hier doorheen, This is probably the first young adult book I ever read and I loved it! We even read it for school too and had to compare the book to the movie, AND I went to see the musical with my mum the songs are still stuck in my head sometimes.
To any dutchie who hasn't read this: please do, it's so good and enjoyable and you learn about history since it sets in the Middle Ages I think It has been a while hahaha.
Another nice thing to point out: there's no romance in this book I can't remember if there was a love interest but it's a YA/middle grade book.
I'm definitely going to reread this one sometime to relive the memories! I am not sure I have the words to adequately describe how much I've loved this book and still love this book.
Myth grade teacher started reading this to our class back in 'or so, About two chapters in I couldn't stand his slow pace anymore, got the book out of the library and plowed through it in a day or two.
I have reread this book so many times I have long lost count and even as an adult I reread it every few years.
My battered 'copy, without a spine and held together by yellowing scotch tape, now sits on my bookshelf in California, half a world away from where I first read it.
This one goes with me whenever I move,

The books tells the story of how Dolf, a twentieth century boy, gets stranded in a children's crusade in theth century and travels with the crusade from Germany, over the Alps, to Italy.
Along the way he transforms the crusade from a ragtag band of rabble, in which the smallest and weakest children perish, into a well organized troupe that takes care of their own.
He battles epidemic outbreaks of disease, bandits, nature, accusations of heresy, superstition and the medieval mindset, The author, one of my personal holy trinity of's Dutch children's lit Thea Beckman, sitelinkJan Terlouw and sitelinkTonke Dragt does an excellent job describing the grueling nature of the journey, the good and the bad, providing a touching experience for the reader, without having Dolf wallow in angst and agony every other page.


When netgalley offered the English translation, I jumped on it, It was about time for another reread anyway, It was a little weird that many of the names had been changed, Rudolf Wega from Amstelveen is now Rudolf Hefting from Amsterdam, Mariecke is Maria, Dom Johannes Dom Augustus etc.
But okay, pandering to the English inability to deal with foreign names, I can live with that,

What was more disturbing is that the story seemed a little flat, . . Was I finally too old for this story Did I know it too well Then I noticed some sentence structures were a bit clunky.
'All that they had so far suffered would pale beside the horrors that awaited them in the mountains' and 'My friend here is rather fond of seeing off bears'.
Maybe it needed some more editing from a native English speaker

Then, when Mariecke/Maria returns from gathering herbs with a bunch of 'henchmen' and I was wondering when she had become a villain needing henchmen, I decided to get out the original.


Well, no wonder the story felt a bit flat,

Here is a passage that describes Dolf coming into the camp on the evening after the first day thechildren had to cross a mountain pass:

For indeed, he now felt responsible for the children's crusade.
For every accident, for every death he blamed himself, And today that burden had proved heavy, Through the tortuous miles of the gorge he had walked with but the one thought that he must get them all through safely.
But he had failed. Right in front of his eyes he had seen a child fall into the stream and be carried away by the torrent.
For two hours he had been frantically digging into the rockslide with nothing but a stick and his bare hands only to find one dead child.
He had carried on his back children who had fallen down and when they were rested set them on their feet and picked up another.
Had they all reached the end of the gorge safely He could not tell, Dolf knew that Leonardo, like himself, was not sleeping,

Now the same passage in the original, translated by me not a native English speaker, so cut me some slack.


Because it had come to this: he felt completely responsible for the children's crusade, Every accident, every death, he held himself accountable for, And today he'd had his share, All the difficult miles through the gorge he had had but one thought: 'I have to get all of them them through this safely.
' But he had failed. Right before his eyes he had seen a child fall into the raging creek, swept away by the torrent to get smashed onto a rock in the riverbed.
He had spent two hours frantically digging into a rockslide with nothing but a stick and his bare hands, only to finally uncover a dead child.
How many others were still buried, he could not guess, he only knew he'd lost them, He had helped crying children clamber over rocks and he had seen the ox die, He had sucked out a snake bite, uncertain if the snake had been venomous, And where was that little guy now He had carried children on his back that had fallen down.
He had put them down and picked up others, Had they all made it to the end of the gorge Hadn't they accidentally left one behind He had not been able to keep up with them all.
Fifty, maybe a hundred children he knew by name and face, The thousands of others were just children, entrusted to his care, He could not tell them apart, there were too many of them,
The chaos in the camp shocked him, Night was threatening. The sky was still clouded, even if it had stopped raining and it was black as pitch, The still valley was rustling with hidden life, with stealthy dangers, A large fire would keep predators at bay, but the fires were going out, The tired wood gatherers had only gathered enough to cook dinner on, Packs of wolves, attracted to the smell of cooked meat and gnawed bones were silently stalking the perimeter of the camp.
Dolf could see their eyes light up when they came close, Staggering through the camp he heard a child scream, but before he had reached the spot, silence had set back in.
What had happened
Occasionally, an arrow shot through the air, loosened by one of the orderlies, One time, Dolf heard the whining flight of an animal that had been shot, But there weren't enough orderlies, they fell asleep or nobody came to relieve them, Exhaustion and despair were sapping Dolf's strength, He had put Maria/Mariecke and a number of small children safely in the middle of the group, near the tent.
And he knew that Leonardo was not sleeping either, but was doing his utmost to keep the camp safe, just like he was.


OMFG .

Somebody do a new translation of this book please, so I can stop crying,

So, theare for the Dutch original, I have no words, or, for the English translation, I saw that the this edition still averages betweenandfrom other reviewers on goodreads, though, which shows you that a good story is pretty much indestructible, even when butchered in the translation.
But, damn, it hurts.

Las dit vier keer toen ik kind was vond het geweldig, Tante leidde daar een grote interesse voor geschiedenis uit af en gaf me vervolgens De leeuw van Vlaanderen van Conscience cadeau nooit verder dan paginageraakt :.
Wiejow eindelijk uit. Dit boek had ook inp kunnen geschreven worden als zij niet elk kind dat stierf tot in het detail had beschreven!! Maar bon, dan heb ik deze klassieker ook eens gelezen, niet van plan om het aan mijn toekomstige leerlingen aan te raden.
Derjährige Rolf Wega wird durch eine Zeitmaschine in das Jahrversetzt, in die Zeit der Kinderkreuzzüge.
Unversehens befindet er sich in einer Schar von achttausend Kindern, die, angeführt von einer Gruppe falscher Mönche, von Köln aus aufbricht, mit dem Ziel, Jerusalem von den Sarazenen zu befreien.
Viele Gefahren, Krankheiten, Hunger und Durst sind ständige Wegbegleiter, Pure nostalgie . . Ik denk dat ik dit boek iets boeiender vond, als ik hem als kind las, Omdat het eigenlijk een kinderboek is, Maar ik vond het boek zeker niet slecht, Tuve que leerlo para hacer una clase, y lo di en opción entre tres libros más.
Casi nadie lo eligió, y de quienes lo hicieron, a casi nadie le gustó, jajaja, Yo no sé por qué, fue mi favorito del montón,

Lo escribió una holandesa nacida a principios del siglo XX, que murió a losel, Fue publicado en, y tuvo mucho éxito, lo suficiente como para ser todavía leído por escolares que son de

otro continente y de otro siglo.
Se trata de un niño, Rodolfo, a quien dicen Dolf, que a losaños prueba una máquina del tiempo que hacen unos tíos locos y llega a una cruzada de niños.
Esto tiene cierta veracidad históricadiscutida, porque en el siglo XIII parece que efectivamente mandaron infantes a hacer cruzadas, pensando que solo necesitarían su inocencia y su cercanía a Dios para salir adelante, niños que podemos imaginar que fueron masacrados.


El libro es ágil y entretenido, tiene un protagonista que usa jeans porque viene del siglo XX y que usa disimuladamente sus conocimientos modernos para ayudarlos a todos, y hay corrupción, y emoción, y compañerismo, y las emociones humanas de siempre, y son interesantes los parajes medievales que se describen y a mí me gustó harto.
Pero no sé si recomendarlo porque a mis alumnas no les gustó nada y los adultos tal vez prefieran leer versiones más elaboradas de este tema de haberlas.
This ended up being a very satisfying read, Im sure if Id read this at age, it would have been astar book for me, I would have particularly enjoyed the episodic adventures of Dolf and the children when I was that age.


I very quickly had to suspend my adult sensibilities major disbelief and try to put myself back to myororyear old self, eager for a fantasy novel.
Im not talking about the time travel aspect, but there is no way that scientists, let alone a father, would let happen what happened at the beginning of this book, especially not in that hasty and ill thought out manner.


I became so curious so I had to look up the history, and I found living history.
Interesting. Interesting take the book has too, A friend when we were fifteen was interested in childrens crusades and I think that they deepened her Christian beliefs I wonder what shed think about new thinking on the subject.


This particular story and its opinions felt verys to me, The author wrote it and it was published first in the Netherlands great translation, I think but it did not have a foreign feel to me.


I liked how the religiousnot religious and those from different centuries learned from one another,

As a nonreligious person I liked that Dolf was not religious but wondered throughout the book if that would last, and I also wondered about whether the whole big picture would change.
I loved how that was resolved, It felt so real that only the time travel aspect felt like speculative fiction, I do wonder how some religious Christians would feel about this childrens novel, and I wonder if its on any banned lists.


Something I did not like was when a narrator comes in occasionally to explain what the Middle Ages were like the information is interesting and Im glad it was included, but I wish it had been incorporated in a less clumsy way.
Another negative was the extremely abrupt ending, reminiscent of sitelinkA Wrinkle in Time, but I forgive it for that.
In fact, its fun to imagine the reactions of some of the characters in the book after the what happens at the end of the story in the book.


I read this for the International Books Club at the sitelinkChildren's Books group, It's the November book, so I'm ahead for once! Een klassieker uit de kindertijd herbeleven wanneer je verplicht moet binnen blijven.