I like the Kirkegaard books, they are funny to read aloud to your children, but this one was not alright at all and shows every amateur psychologist that Kirgegaard must have grown up a very bullied child. A grown up like myself, who was bullied my entire childhood by classmates, neighbourhood children and my own mother, recognize the symptoms and they really comes out in this book, that might be autobiographical in some ways. The book made me as a reader, very uncomfortable, so it is not a book I recommend reading to a sensitive child like my youngest autistic child.
Ivan Olsen gets beaten up EVERY day in school and the boys fill his trousers with water. Where are the teachers? How can this be accepted by the grown ups? When Ivan gets home, his mother the coward, does nothing but hangs his trousers up to dry. But his father continues the bullying by telling him to toughen up. Right! My mother's exact words!
Ivan is dyslexic but is receiving no help with it, in school. And he has a weak constitution which makes gym class a nightmare where he usually ends up having a nose bleed.
What does his father do to make his son toughen up? He goes and gets a book on Tarzan and forces Ivan to hang from a tree, to build muscles. But Ivan of course falls down and gets the nose bleed he expected to get. That is when his father labels him rubber-Tarzan and the children in the street hears all of it.
Ivan is desperately trying to find something he could become good at, so he tries to join the football playing classmates at recess, without any success. No talent at all. He tries to learn how to bicycle on a way too big bicycle and ends up in the sea. He tries to learn how to spit as far as the big boys, but all he accomplishes, is drooling down his entire sweater.
One day, he runs in to a witch by the river and she grants him a wish. His wish is to have all his wishes come true. First he impresses the boys with spitting very far off. Then he borrows a book at the library with 9 000 pages in it, which he reads to the teacher. Then the big boys are getting ready to fill his trousers with water but first he shows them his biceps, then HE fills 17 boys' trousers with water and locks the rest of them in to the loos, together with the gym teacher. He goes home and carries his dad out to the tree, where he puts him on a branch, that breaks off. His father starts crying when his nose starts bleeding. Then Ivan gets up on the way too big bicycle and cycles off. But soon he is being chased by a bully on a moped. This time it is the bully who ends up in the sea though. On his way home, Ivan bicycles by a football stadium and hears a match being played in there. Two famous teams are playing but when one team's player gets a fly in the eye, they need help. Ivan runs in and takes the player's place and of course scores a goal. Ivan sleeps well that night.
But the next morning, when he heads to the witch for a new wish, she is gone. At 09:00 he falls down in gym class and gets a nose bleed. At 10:00 he is locked in to the school loos. 11:00 his trousers are filled with water. And when his dad gets home that day, he has bought a new Tarzan book, since Ivan ruined the first one, the day before.
Where is the sense in this book? A child gets to have revenge one day, and the next day and all other days, has to suffer through the regular bullying. Not my kind of book.