Emil and the Detectives

Emil and the Detectives (Emil #1)

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85  ·  rating details  ·  2,207 ratings  ·  102 reviews
If Mrs Tischbein had known the amazing adventures her son Emil would have in Berlin, she'd never have let him go.

Unfortunately, when his seven pounds goes missing on the train, Emil is determined to get it back - and when he teams up with the detectives he meets in Berlin, it's just the start of a marvellous money-retrieving adventure . . .

A classic and influential story,...more
Paperback
Published April 5th 2001 (first published 1929)
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tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE
review of
Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 10, 2012

I decided to read a representative sampling of Kästner's work once I learned that his bks had been burned by the nazis. I started w/ his novel entitled The Missing Miniature or The Adventures of A Sensitive Butcher [see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13... ] & then read his poetry collection entitled Let's Face It [see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13......more
Rina Sakurai


-Penguin press,level 3

-95 minutes

-7 words summary: a boy/trip/problem/taxi driver/girl/fall/police

-Discussion questions:
1.If you see a moment which an accident will be happened, Do you have enough bravery to save it?
- To be honest, I can not be moving anymore if I see the scene.
2.Have you helped people who seem to be in trouble? If you answer yes, how did you help he/she?
- I always give elderly people a seats in a train. It's natural, but a tiny help is as important as great help.

-Favorite Sc...more
Alex Baugh
This is the second week of the German Literature Month challenge and for that we were supposed to read a crime novel. I considered a lot of different choices, but decided on Emil and the Detectives for one simple reason. That reason is that it is a book I haven’t read since forever and I really like Erich Kästner.

Emil and the Detectives is a pretty straightforward story. Young Emil is being sent off to Berlin to visit relatives for a week long holiday. He is taking the train and carrying money,...more
Bettie
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Eva
saya tidak memerlukan waktu banyak untuk membaca buku ini namun saya menikmati bacaan ini seakan everlasting.. perhaps, it is.

buku bagus untuk anak dengan imajinasi anak yang lari kesana kemari tapi tetap mengindahkan kehalusan bahasa dan kesederhanaan imajinasi. ciri khas imajinasi anak laki-laki. bandingkan dengan kakak beradik berhati singa, sama2 penulisan imajinasi liar anak, namun dalam bentuk yang lebih rumit dengan efek cukup negatif dan gaya bahasa yang lebih kasar.

seperti penulis buku...more
Donna Radcliff
Originally published in 1929 in pre-war Germany, this classic childrens adventure follows Emil as he travels to Berlin to visit his grandmother and has all of his money stolen by a sneak thief who is part of an organized gang lead by The Baron, and the children (detectives) that help him to apprehend the bad guys. Released in 1964 as a Disney movie, it starred Brian Russell, Roger Mobley and Walter Slezak. I saw the movie (I was twelve and in love with Roger Mobley) and immediately got the movie...more
Anna Ligtenberg
ISBN 1585675865 - Emil is going on the train to visit relatives in Berlin. His mother puts an envelope of money in his care, to deliver along with some flowers when he arrives. Things go wrong when he dozes off, only to awaken and discover that his car-mate and his money are gone. Determined to get his money back, Emil stumbles upon a group of boys in Berlin who quickly organize to capture the thief.

Hardly dated at all, this is a light, fun story. The author had some fun with naming characters,...more
Mayumi Inoko
-Penguin Readers level 3.
-Time 9/29= 104 minutes.
-7 word summary: Emil - mother - thief - friends - catch - famous - happy.
-Discussion Questions:
1.Have you ever been to your granma's house alone when you were child?
Yes, I have been to my grandmother's house alone many times. I left Nagoya for Tokyo and it took about 2hours so I often took some magazines to read while I was on the Sinkansen.
2.Have you ever been to a police station?
Yes,I have visited a police office and at that time I lost my way...more
Shonaigh Mudie
A most treasured book given as a gift from my beautiful neighbours Maggie and Dr Bell. A lovely elderly couple, neighbours who lived over the fence. Remember visiting them and also chatting to them as they did their garden. Emil a young boy, is sent by his mother into the big city to take money to his grandmother. A man on the train tricks him and steels this money. It is up to Emil to discover what happened and to get the money back. Instead of involving the police, he and a friend Gustav colle...more
Akari Yamashita
Penguin readers Lebel 3

Time
12/30: 30min 12/31: 30min 1/5: 15 min 1/7 20min

7 words summary
Emil- grandmother- money -robber- friends- detectives- happy

Q1. When was your first alone trip?
A1. I don't remember but I visited my grandparents house in Mie by train.
My grandmother came to Nagoya and I met her there!

Q2. In this story, his friends became detectives and solved the case!
Do you have a confidence to be one of a member and catch the robber?
A2. I don't have a confidence if I am alone, but there a...more
Paul Servini
This is one of the first books I can remember reading. And before that I can remember my mother reading it to me. Now, I'm a parent myself and both our children have had the pleasure of saving this and other stories by the author. Sure, there are lots of reasons not to read this book. It's dated, the plot is a highly unlikely one, it represents some values we may consider old-fashioned. But despit all that it's brilliant.

A classic children's story which tells of how someone steals some money fro...more
Steve
A nostalgic hour on ebay left me with a Cathy Dennis cd, a box of panini stickers, and a beautiful 1964 paperback of Emil and the Detectives.

On the introduction page it reads "Forward readers of eight could tackle it, while those in their early teens still enjoy it without wanting to disguise the fact" Well i first read when 9 or 10. And 20 years later it is still an exciting and charming read. In fact in those 20 years I have read books as enjoyable as this, but probably not enjoyed anything mo...more
Tyler
Es stimmt. Euch habt völlig rechts. Ich lese ab und zu ein kindes Buch auf Deutsch. Was hältst du davon!? Muss ja die Wortschatz breiter machen!
Sandy
This book haunts me. In a few short years their lives will be completely changed. No more individualism or self determination, but instead a rigorous recruiting into an ideology of race superiority and military might. In this children’s book, there are many clues to how this may have come about. There are also startling differences between the children detectives in Berlin and the Hitler Youth they will become. Even though the society is being primed for a radical change, Emil and the Detectives...more
Jan-Maat
There are two things that strike me in particular: the ability and sense of responsibility of the children to organise themselves and the hero's sense of responsibility towards his mother and his family - not surprising given als ich ein kleiner Junge war.

It's a simple story of a boy from a small town going to visit relatives in the big city. Entertaining and engaging. The hero's fear of going to the police because he had drawn a mustache on a statue always felt realistic to me as a child.
Koen Setyawan
Buku yang sudah lama sekali. Tapi masih menginspirasi. Kisahnya tentang Emil kecil yang pergi mengunjungi sepupunya di kota besar, Berlin. Di atas kereta Emil curiga dengan lelaki yang duduk di depannya. Dugaannya benar. Ketika terbangun dari tidurnya, uang yang diselipkan di jasnya oleh ibunya, hilang. Dengan bantuan teman-teman barunya, Emil mengejar sang pencopet. Anak-anak Berlin pun menggunakan jaringan sepermainannya untuk mengendus dan menemukan pelakunya. Emils, sang anak kampung, bukan...more
Nesa Sivagnanam
The story begins in Neustadt, a provincial German town which is the home to young schoolboy Emil Tischbein. His father is dead and his mother raises him alone working as a hairdresser. She sends Emil to Berlin with 120 marks (a hairdresser's monthly salary then) to give to his grandmother and 20 marks for himself, sums that have taken some months to save from her modest earnings. On the way he is very careful not to lose the money and uses a needle to pin it to the lining of his jacket.

On the tr...more
Nicholas Whyte
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1985547.html[return][return]Classic children's books, which I had first read many years ago long before I got to know and love Berlin, the city in which it is set. It's a very basic but charming story of the young and smart and good getting together to defeat the old and evil, and has not lost its charm - so popular that it was the only book by Kästner to escape the book-burning of May 1933. I had forgotten the scene-setting dramatis personæ at the beginning, and al...more
Jason
This book is interesting for two historical reasons.

1) It is the progenitor of the children-as-detectives genre, which would later bring us Enid Blyton's Famous Five, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, The Boxcar Children, and Encyclopedia Brown.

2) It is a sort of time capsule, showing us through children's eyes the world of Berlin right before the National Socialist party came into power. Strangely, this book is the only one of Kästner's then-existing works that the Nazis did not feel they had to burn...more
Michele Brenton
This is the first book my father read all the way through on his own as a child of seven. It is also the first book my brother read all the way through on his own. I read it around the same time as my brother did (well first - I always got to the books first in my house) and my son read it in his turn. So it is a bit of a family tradition. There is a black and white film too which is very close to the book. Lots of fun and a great book for boys who might not otherwise like reading too much.
Glory
Although I am far from childhood, I read this story to know firsthand its classic acclaim. It certainly comes alive with colorful, realistic, and memorable characters. The narrative itself is wonderfully unique, with the anonymous narrator somewhere between being within the story and being omniscient in it. The image captions display the random specifics and sidenotes of life that spark of reality. I love the honest goodness of Emil, and I believe that his character is the real moral of the stor...more
Scott Harris
I had never read nor even heard about Kastner's children stories and was delighted with the experience of reading this one. Kastner has a very intriguing style of engaging his readers while telling his story - akin to sitting in person with him while he narrates it - with side commentaries address directly to you. Moreover, it is a fun story, with an albeit dated sense of freedom which the children get to be the heroes chasing off through a wild adventure.
Sandra
The first 'chapter', adequately called "Die Geschichte fängt noch gar nicht an" made me think that his wouldn't be fun at all. Kästner explains why the story he actually wanted to write couldn't be written, and it was just so silly that I just couldn't have high hopes for this book.

The rest of the story however was much nicer! Emil goes by train from Neustadt to Berlin. His mother has given him 140 Mark to bring to his grandma in Berlin, but while he's on the train he falls asleep and the money...more
Sara Truog
This book about a German boy who tracks down and captures a thief with help from an enthusiastic band of street kids TOTALLY ROCKED. Daniel and I both loved it. While Kastner wrote the book in 1929, the translation we read is from 2007 and it felt very accessible to modern-day audiences. I would love to read this with a kids book club in the near future - it's a great kid power novel and there's a lot of humor in it. A must read!
Mady
My first kids book from Erich Kästner and I quite liked it :)

Emil goes on the train to meet his aunt, grandmother and cousin in Berlin. On the way his money is stolen and he decides to follow the robber. And so he starts an adventure where he's joined by many detective kids in Berlin.

However, I've read a Portuguese translation and it was really bad (this edition is from 1970)... at times, I could only really understand what the sentences meant when I put them back in German :( It'd have been ea...more
Jane
I decided to read this because Michael Rosen, poet and artistic director of the Brighton Festival 2013, mentioned it as his book of the festival. I decided that as I'd never read it, I should and so ordered a copy.

I read this before finishing Sophie's World as I needed something less thought-inducing to read on an evening before going to sleep, and it certainly fitted the bill.

Being a children's book, it's a quick and easy read for an adult, but it's no less delightful and engaging for that. It...more
Helen
This book was translated from German and first published in 1929. I remember reading it as a child and recently reread it. It was still just as entertaining. In the new rerelease Maurice Sendak writes the intro to the book and I quote:Emil is a little masterpiece. It shows us the heroic nature of children, how they can stick together and accomplish wonders without the help of inept grownups. Read it and you'll be happy!
Shiho Kawai
-Penguin Readers, level 3
-Time: 90 minutes
-Seven Word: friends, train, money, thief, grandmother, city, newspaper
-Questions:
1. Have you ever visited grandmother or grandfather alone?
Yes, I have. I sometimes take a train and I have visited them by bicycle. It took an hour.
2. Have you ever been appeared in a newspaper?
No, I haven't. I don't want to be appeared because I am shy.
Tess
The second [ETA: strike that, it's the third] Kästner cildren's book I read and I quite liked it. The story starts out slowly with maybe a bit unnecessary rambling on Kästner's part. Once Emil arrives in Berlin, however, the book turns into a fun ride and it's lovely to read what the group of children can and will achieve when they set their minds to it.
Lisa
It was pretty fun. Good for kids under 10 probably it's a little bit young for anyone older. I wasn't that excited about this particular translation which tried to make the story modern and didn't do a very good job at times. All in all is was o.k., I read that it was funny and it was at times but could have been funnier.
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Emil und die Detektive (Hardcover)
Emil and the Detectives (Hardcover)
Emil and the Detectives (Paperback)
Emil i detektivi (Hardcover)
Emil And The Detectives (Paperback)

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Erich Kästner (23 February 1899 – 29 July 1974) was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known for his humorous, socially astute poetry and children's literature.
More about Erich Kästner...
Pünktchen und Anton Das doppelte Lottchen Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten کلاس پرنده Emil und die Detektive / Emil und die drei Zwillinge

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“Eine Geschichte, ein Roman, ein Märchen - diese Dinge gleichen den Lebewesen, und vielleicht sind es sogar welche. Sie haben ihren Kopf, ihre Beine, ihren Blutkreislauf und ihren Anzug wie richtige Menschen. Und wenn ihnen die Nase im Gesicht fehlt oder wenn sie zwei verschiedene Schuhe anhaben, merkt man es bei genauem Zusehen.” 2 people liked it
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