King Matt the First Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Copyright

  About the Book

  This moving fable follows the adventures of Matt who becomes king when just a child and decides to reform his country according to his own priorities. Ignoring his grow-up ministers, he builds the best zoo in the world and decrees that children should be given chocolate every day. He fights in battles, braves the jungle, and crosses the desert, but perhaps the most life-altering thing of all is that the lonely boy king finds true friends. This timeless book shows us not only what children’s literature can be, but what children can be.

  About the Author

  Janusz Korczak was born in 1878. He was an educator and paediatrician who introduced progressive orphanages into Poland, trained teachers in what is now called moral education, and defended children’s rights in juvenile courts. In 1942, when his orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto was evacuated, Korczak refused offers of help for his own safety, saying, ‘You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this.’ Korczak and the children walked together to the train bound for the death camp at Treblinka.

  King Matt the First

  Janusz Korczak

  Translated by Richard Lourie

  With an introduction by Esmé Raji Codell

  Introduction

  ‘WHAT MAKES THIS children’s book one of the greatest of all time?

  First comes the question of what makes a great children’s book, period. It must have humor, adventure, excitement, friendship (romance is optional, and only in small doses). The main character must be one that comes to life on every page, and one that the reader mourns the loss of upon closing the cover. It must have mischief and naughtiness, but placate adults with a lesson or two so that the child may read in peace. Any profanity ought to be hidden in the middle, further along than most grown-ups are likely to read. If it has the effrontery to lack pictures, it must compensate with lots of lively conversation. The bad must be punished and the good rewarded; enemies are those who misunderstand children. Wishes should be granted, unless they are too greedy. There should be animals. And sweets. And days off from school. And some absence of parents.

  These are elements intrinsic to the popular works of J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and Louis Sachar (Holes). The other common factor is the overriding idea of the child as a hero, one who can succeed against great odds. In this canon is King Matt the First. Conceived for the reading and listening pleasure of orphans by a pediatrician who also happened to be one heck of a writer, King Matt the First endured a turbulent era to enjoy a celebrated status among children in Poland comparable to J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

  I came across this book in the mid-1980s when I was working in the children’s department of a bookstore. As a bookseller, when I looked at a shelf, I didn’t see just books, I saw presents. I saw a row of gifts that authors were trying to give: their world view, their stories, wishes, warnings—the very best of themselves, wrapped up in words.

  But.

  It’s one thing for a writer to give a gift to a child; it’s another for that gift to be received. Some gifts are like scratchy sweaters or lipstick kisses and are received as such. But every now and then there comes a bike, a beautiful shining bike of a book, the book that makes children shout “Thank you!” without prompting, and at the same time allows them to ride away from you as fast as they can go.

  The plain, brown binding of my first copy of King Matt gave no indication, really, of this bike of a book; in fact, it seemed to be trying to disguise itself as a book for grown-ups. But the words made clear its true audience, words so deftly written by Janusz Korczak, pseudonym of the renowned and sometimes controversial Polish pediatrician Henryk Goldszmidt. He introduced progressive orphanages into Poland and directed two of them before being interned at the Warsaw ghetto, where he ran one. His love and concern for all children was evident in the more than twenty books he authored, his treatise How to Love a Child among the most popular. Dubbed “the Karl Marx of Children,” he worked indefatigably to defend children’s rights in juvenile courts, and as “the Old Doctor,” a popular radio personality of the times, he was able to dispense his message of compassion and respect for children to a wider audience. Like the hero of King Matt the First, he founded the first national children’s newspaper and ran his orphanages with the help of a children’s parliament. Indeed, King Matt the First appears to be the most graceful and lasting manifestation of Korczak’s visionary assessment of the rich moral life and potential of children.

  King Matt the First recounts the adventures of a boy who, after the death of his father, is left with the overwhelming task of ruling a country. Determined not to be a mere figurehead, he struggles to navigate through the guile and ambiguity of his advisers in order to implement his reforms. And what reforms they are! Summer camps in the forests, on mountains, and at seashores so that poor children might enjoy nature! Schools outfitted with seesaws and carousels! The building of a zoo with a menagerie that is the envy of the world! Korczak could have succeeded through his plot fixtures alone: unforgettable is the gift of the biggest doll in the world given to the fire chief’s daughter, and fabled are the days during King Matt’s reign when the children got to run the kingdom while the adults toiled in school. Any child delights in such extravagances, and in this way Korczak spoils all children like a generous old uncle who comes bearing armloads of lollipops. But at the heart of this story is a child who is wholly alone, dealing, in turns, with conflicts that academics will recognize as Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development: the need for autonomy and rebellion against overprotection; the playacting of an adult role in order to determine where initiative is acceptable and what actions are not allowed; the pleasure of industriousness and the desire to persevere; and ultimately, the resolution of an identity, built on outcomes of previous crises and relationships with others. The boy who begins the story merely wearing a crown ends it as a true king, a visionary leader who has built his place in history not only through accolades but by failure and painful loss, a boy whose fate is determined not only by his choices, but by the choices of those who surround him
. The ending of King Matt the First is jolting, like waking from a dream at the scariest part only to find that by some miracle you are still intact.

  The fate of King Matt is particularly poignant when juxtaposed with the fate of the author and the children who inspired him, who were not afforded a miracle. On August 6, 1942, Korczak and the two hundred children in his orphanage followed behind the green flag, their symbol of children’s freedom, to the train station, where the group was taken to the gas chambers at Treblinka. Korczak had several opportunities to escape, but he refused: “You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this.” While he could not offer rescue, he could offer comfort, and so, like a true father, he stayed with them to the very last of all of their breaths.

  I imagine that Korczak had a sense of what was in store for them. How do you prepare children for such a world that would kill them? By imagining a better one. Korczak knew that the power of story is a path to utopia. If his vision of a better world would not be realized for his children, then maybe it could for children of another generation. I think the legacy of King Matt is not only in the surviving of the manuscript, but in the sharing of it, as Korczak did by reading it aloud to his charges. To read this book aloud to a child is to celebrate a message of great hope. If there is a miracle, it is that within all the rubble and ruin of war, a story survived, with words that click along like the spokes of a fleeing bicycle. Each word in the story, though disguised, is the same word over and over: Live! Live! Live for the children who didn’t get to live. Live as if the world were your kingdom.

  Generations later, I was working as a schoolteacher, many countries and an ocean away from where this book was written. I read this book aloud to children who had the luxury of waking up from bad dreams. I soon discovered that King Matt the First asks a lot of its reader in a modern context. When I first read this book to children who were predominantly African-American, I waited for them to explode with righteous indignation. I withered at the prospect of explaining to thirty-some expectant faces that the author probably included things such as African cannibals eating salted flesh because he was sitting in a room full of two hundred kids and wanted to say something that made them go “Eeeeeewwww.”

  But I didn’t have to explain it, because the children didn’t identify with it, and created their own chorus of “Eeeeeewwww” just as kids might have half a century ago. It’s clear that King Matt is, in fact, partial to the Africans, and that they are more trustworthy and adept than their white counterparts in his kingdom. Klu Klu, the heroine of the story, has her own moments where she doesn’t think much of the white people, referring to them on occasion as “barbaric,” mirroring the white people’s flip appraisal of her as “savage.” Generally, I think characters throughout the book are prejudiced and suspicious of one another, which sounds pretty realistic to me and, evidently, to my young listeners as well. These prejudices stood in the way of progress in the kingdom, which the children recognized immediately as the unfortunate case in real life. I wonder, though, if I had been reading to a group of predominantly Caucasian American children today whose economic or geographical demographic might still segregate them from people of color, I might have been inclined to abridge the book simply to avoid introducing unnecessary negative stereotypes to an audience that doesn’t have enough multicultural exposure to counter them. Or maybe I would have taken a deep breath and read it uncensored, putting it into context. I don’t know. Even though I consider King Matt a masterpiece of world literature, I don’t see the book as untouchable. The general rule I have found when it comes to all children’s books is that adults should read a book to themselves before sharing it with children. This makes it easier to determine what is best to discuss based on individual values.

  Another key to sharing this book is to expect the best from young listeners. I had underestimated the children in their ability to see the universal qualities of the book; I came away with a renewed admiration for Korczak’s bravery not only as a human being but as a writer and as an advocate of children. I thought the book was flawed because it says incorrect things. A book for children in which people never say incorrect things is equally flawed in its dishonesty. In this, King Matt is controversial.

  The last great gift of King Matt is candor. Outspoken, impetuous, and inventive, King Matt and his friends Felek and Klu Klu are Everykid, the children who ask “Why?” and, as often, “Why not?” But unlike Everykid, King Matt is in a position to demand the answers. This book is a portrait of a child’s attempts to give his best gifts to the world. It teaches grown-ups not only what children’s literature can be, but what children can be.

  Long may the green flag wave!

  —Esmé Raji Codell

  WHEN I WAS the little boy you see in the photograph, I wanted to do all the things that are in this book. But I forgot to, and now I’m old. I no longer have the time or the strength to go to war or travel to the land of the cannibals. I have included this photograph because it’s important what I looked like when I truly wanted to be a king, and not when I was writing about King Matt. I think it’s better to show pictures of what kings, travelers, and writers looked like before they grew up, or grew old, because otherwise it might seem that they knew everything from the start and were never young themselves. And then children will think they can’t be statesmen, travelers, and writers, which wouldn’t be true.

  Grownups should not read my novel, because some of the chapters are not very nice. They’ll misunderstand them and make fun of them. But if they really want to read my book, they should give it a try. After all, you can’t tell grownups not to do something—they won’t listen to you, and you can’t make them obey.

  AND SO THIS is what happened.

  The doctor said it would be very bad if the king didn’t get better in three days.

  The doctor’s exact words were: “The king is seriously ill and it’ll be bad if he doesn’t get better in three days.”

  Everyone was very worried. The Prime Minister put on his glasses and asked: “So then what will happen if the king doesn’t get better?”

  The doctor did not wish to give a definite answer, but everyone understood that the king would die.

  The Prime Minister was very worried and called a meeting of the ministers.

  The ministers assembled in the great hall and sat on comfortable armchairs at a long table. On the table in front of each minister was a sheet of paper and two pencils: one was an ordinary pencil, but the other was blue on one end and red on the other. There was also a little bell in front of the Prime Minister.

  The ministers had locked the door, so they wouldn’t be disturbed, and all the lights were turned on now. But no one was saying a word.

  Then the Prime Minister rang his little bell and said: “Now we will discuss what to do. For the king is sick and cannot rule the country.”

  “I think,” said the Minister of War, “that we ought to summon the doctor. And he will have to state clearly whether he can cure the king or not.”

  All the ministers were very afraid of the Minister of War because he always carried a saber and a revolver, and so they did what he said.

  “Fine, let’s summon the doctor.”

  They sent for the doctor at once, but the doctor could not come, because he was just putting twenty-four cupping glasses on the king.

  “Too bad, we’ll have to wait,” said the Prime Minister. “But meanwhile let’s discuss what to do if the king dies.”

  “I know,” replied the Minister of Justice. “According to the law, after the death of the king his eldest son inherits the throne. That’s why he is called the successor to the throne. If the king dies, his eldest son takes the throne.”

  “But the king has only one son.”

  “That’s all he needs.”

  “All right, but the king’s son is little Matt. What kind of king could he be?”

  “Matt doesn’t even know how to write yet.”

  “Tha
t is a problem,” replied the Minister of Justice. “Nothing like this has ever happened before in our country, but in Spain, Belgium, and other countries, kings have died and left little sons. And that little child had to be the king.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the Minister of Mail and Telegraphs, “I have seen postage stamps with pictures of little kings like that.”

  “But, gentlemen,” said the Minister of Education, “how is it possible to have a king who does not know how to write or count, who does not know geography or grammar?”

  “Here’s what I think,” said the Minister of Finance. “How will the king be able to do his accounts, how will he be able to figure out how much new money is to be printed if he doesn’t know his multiplication tables?”

  “Gentlemen,” said the Minister of War, “the worst thing of all is that none of my men will be afraid of such a little child. How will he deal with soldiers and generals?”

  “It’s not only a question of the military,” said the Minister of Internal Affairs. “No one will be afraid of such a little child. We’ll have constant strikes. I won’t be able to guarantee public order if you make Matt king.”

  “I don’t know what will happen,” said the Minister of Justice, red with anger, “but I know one thing—the law says that after the death of a king his son inherits his throne.”

  “But Matt is too little,” shouted all the ministers.

  A terrible quarrel would have surely broken out, but at that moment the door opened and a foreign ambassador walked into the hall.

  It may seem strange that a foreign ambassador walked in on a meeting of the ministers when the door was locked. So I must tell you that when they sent for the doctor they forgot to lock the door. Later on, some people even said that it was treason, that the Minister of Justice had left the door open on purpose because he knew that the ambassador was coming.

  “Good evening,” said the ambassador. “I am here on behalf of my king to demand that your next king be Matt the First. And if he’s not, there will be war.”