Joshua and the Magic Fiddle

by Janosch

When a bird gives him a magic fiddle and teaches him to play a song that causes things to grow or shrink, tiny Yosa uses the spell to make the moon wax and wane.

Genres: Picture Books

31 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Janosch is the pen name of Horst Eckert, one of Germany's most popular authors and illustrators of children's books. His works have won several awards.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another absolute favourite picture book from my childhood! Basically and essentially somewhat of a "pourquoi tale" (why the moon waxes and wanes, as well as why some individuals are larger while others are smaller), Janosch's Der Josa mit der Zauberfiedel is an engaging story teeming with sweetness, occasional sly humour and adventure (as Josa's magic fiddle causes those who listen to grow when he plays normally and to become smaller when he plays backwards, both animals and humans, both aimate and inanimate objects).

Throughout his journey to the end of the world, to the moon, Josa repeatedly uses his magic fiddle to help those in need, who then in turn give him increasingly detailed directions to reach his destination (until Josa is captured by a greedy king, but since he can play backwards, you can likely imagine and guess what happens when the monarch insists that Josa play his fiddle for him and only for him). The accompanying illustrations are lush and imaginative, albeit a bit childlike and simplistic (but for me, that is and remains one of the charms). And I do consider it both lucky and almost providential that I recently found this book available for the Kindle, as my original copy of Der Josa mit der Zauberfidel was left in Germany when we immigrated to Canada in 1976 (and while in retrospect, I can certainly and to a point appreciate and even much understand that my parents were not able to take along all of our books, the reader and picture book lover in me still mourns this, as an e-book copy of Der Josa mit der Zauberfidel really is just not the same, especially as a picture book).

[Cole Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joshua and the Magic Fiddle is a story of a boy is trying to find his place in the world. His father is a big strong woodsman, but he is little and weak and doesn't know what to do with his life. One day a bird gives him a magic fiddle and when he plays a certain song, everyone who hears it either grows, or shrinks. He then sets out to try to grow and shrink the sun to impress his father and runs into several obstacles along the way. One obstacle includes being sent for by the king so he could grow the King big and strong. However he did not want to go, but the King's army kidnapped him anyway.

This book was published in 1967 with Janosch as the author and illustrator of this book. It is painted in watercolors and has been translated into 9 different languages. The story was detail oriented with the main focus being on the words with pictures to reiterate what was going on in the story. The illustrations and words are on completely separate pages which plays well with the story considering that the book is more story based.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea of the fiddle that can make things grow or shrink depending on whether they listen to Joshua play his song forwards or backwards. He made a king shrink; I wish somebody could do that to a certain king-like person today.... But the story isn't well developed or cohesive, and the pictures are not to my taste at all.

[Kaylee · Rating 3 out of 5]

In"Joshua and the Magic Fiddle," we follow Joshua on a journey to make his dad happy with a magic fiddle that is given to him. Like any fairytale book, the main character sets out on a journey and encounters many hardships along the way. This is the same for Joshua! We see him conquer all the tasks brought upon him and see him grow as a character.

This book focuses more on the character's background and why he goes out on all these journeys. We are able to see the clear person vs. person and person vs. society plot points that contribute a lot to the story. The illustrations are very simple and don't contain much detail but still present the story in an easy-to-follow way. I think this book can be considered both a fairytale and a folktale because of the magical elements of the story and the main character is still able to find solutions to his problems in clever ways.