“Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go; And Conrad cries out – Oh! Oh! Oh! Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast; That both his thumbs are off at last.” – The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb from Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann.
O.M.G. I LOVED these stories when I was little! I took Hoffman’s book of cautionary tales out from my primary school library over and over, and over again. 😀
Why am I telling you this? Well, I came across this article on Mental Floss: The 19th-Century Book of Horrors That Scared German Kids Into Behaving: Original illustrations from the book that inspired Edward Scissorhands.
Reading this – “…grisly moral tales: of a boy who wasted away after refusing his soup, another who lay writhing in pain after a mistreated dog exacted revenge, and yet another who had his thumb cut off after he sucked on it one too many times. Struwwelpeter’s sin was that he never cut his nails, bathed, or combed his hair; his punishment was distinct and cruel—he was unloved.” – I barely 
recognised my childhood favourite. Morbid? Terrifying? Disturbing? Eight year old me thought these stories – and those fabulous, grisly illustrations! – were hilarious, if slightly unnerving. I remember liking how unusual the art was. Put in context; a contemporaneous children’s illustrator would be someone like Richard Scarry – not that I didn’t LOVE Couscous the famous Algerian Detective too! – and you’ll perhaps appreciate my 70s mindset. Struwwelpeter was just… creepy. But then that’s why I kept coming back to this book, and re-rereading! 😀
Psychotic dandy, Scissorman, clearly chimed with more than just blood-thirsty child-me, and has appeared in such diverse endeavours such as W.H. Auden’s poetry and, of course, Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands.
Art credit: Little-Suck-a-Thumb ©Dover Children’s / Couscous art found at EverBooks; copyright ©Golden Books Publishing Company
