I think this is the best known piece of Dutch children's literature (except of course Miffy; or, as we like to call her: Nijntje). As I believe this is the only book by Thea Beckman that has been translated, I would recommend people to read it, as it was one of my favourites when I was younger. Time travel & get stuck in Medieval Europa, sounds fun?

 

Don't watch the movie, the book is so much better!

 

Original title: Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek

 

Misschien wel dé klassieker uit de Nederlandse jeugdliteratuur. Een absolute must-read. De zestienjarige Dolf uit Amstelveen komt via een foutje in een tijdmachine per ongeluk midden in de kinderkruistocht terecht. Deze helse tocht werd ondernomen om met een heilig leger van kinderen de stad Jeruzalem te bevrijden. (Een idee dat natuurlijk gedoemd was te mislukken).
Het verhaal vond ik zelf heel mooi opgebouwd, de verschillende fasen in het boek zijn allemaal goed uitgewerkt, maar mijn favoriete deel is toch wel de kruistocht zelf, voor ze eenmaal aan de Middelandse zee komen.

Ik zou dit boek echt aan iedereen aanraden die het nog niet gelezen heeft!

My thoughts

Cover: like the newly American better than the old nostalgic original version... [Correction the publication of 2003 by a imprint of lemiscaat i http://www.lemniscaat.nl/ s my favorite

Book: This was one of the very first books I read when I was younger. Can you believe it’s almost 40 year old and published again this year in America. When I saw it on netgalley I had to request it , I had a rush of nostalgia.I Loved it in the past. My native tongue is Dutch by the way. Iwondered if I felt the same after 10 years later and in English. It’s a pretty decent translation and my growing up resulted in a 4 star rating.

Rudolf Hefting, Dolf for short, our leading male from Holland. Who is smart, brave, courageous teenager and stand’s his ground which gets him in trouble in the 12th century.

When you begin to read the this novel, we find Dolf in the laboratory of the family friends , two loony ish professors after asking and persisting his parents to see the newly developed time machine. He persisted again while he was time with the Profs that he could be more useful than chimps, which they used for experiments.

Dolf is now in the 12 century france or so he thinks , but rather in germany. And meets a crusade formed completely by children ranging from the age of 4 to 14, 15, 16 to free Jerusalem from the Arabs.

He misses his ‘’ride back’’ to the present and is stuck in the 12th century. I would have panicked but he is calm and collected. And he takes part of the crusade.
Some secrets are being hidden , lies are being told in the whole [massa massa, local tongue,sranang tongo] congregation of the child crusade.

Liked Dolf interaction with the 12th era folk, everything is different for this 20th century teen. He is very skeptic of this religious area, Europe of that time period. This has no doubt Christian/religious influences but it’s not preachy. So not religious folk can enjoy it!! I hope

There’s no minor lead or secondary character I did not like.

Maria a 11 year old taking part in the crusade is from the beginning with Dolf and befriends him and sees her like a little sister.

Leonardo Fibonacci, 15, 16 or 17 I think is very first friend Dolf befriends

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO ROMANCE IN THIS BOOK. SO BOYS BE NOT AFRAID TO READ A 300 PLUS PAGE NOVEL.lol

After the big reveal, the secrets have come to light. It dragged on a bit let say 40 ish pages but that’s a short amount of page space and quickly begins to exite again when Dolf finds a way to go home, to the present. Will say this it was emotional for Dolf to leave his friends behind after let say 3 to 4 months with them. Roro signing out.

I am not sure I have the words to adequately describe how much I've loved this book and still love this book. My 4th grade teacher started reading this to our class back in '78 or so. About two chapters in I couldn't stand his slow pace anymore, got the book out of the library and plowed through it in a day or two. I have reread this book so many times I have long lost count and even as an adult I reread it every few years. My battered '83 copy, without a spine and held together by yellowing scotch tape, now sits on my bookshelf in California, half a world away from where I first read it. This one goes with me whenever I move.

The books tells the story of how Dolf, a twentieth century boy, gets stranded in a children's crusade in the 13th century and travels with the crusade from Germany, over the Alps, to Italy. Along the way he transforms the crusade from a ragtag band of rabble, in which the smallest and weakest children perish, into a well organized troupe that takes care of their own. He battles epidemic outbreaks of disease, bandits, nature, accusations of heresy, superstition and the medieval mindset. The author, one of my personal holy trinity of 70's Dutch children's lit (Thea Beckman, Jan Terlouw and Tonke Dragt) does an excellent job describing the grueling nature of the journey, the good and the bad, providing a touching experience for the reader, without having Dolf wallow in angst and agony every other page.

When netgalley offered the English translation, I jumped on it. It was about time for another reread anyway. It was a little weird that many of the names had been changed. Rudolf Wega from Amstelveen is now Rudolf Hefting from Amsterdam, Mariecke is Maria, Dom Johannes Dom Augustus etc. But okay, pandering to the English inability to deal with foreign names, I can live with that.

What was more disturbing is that the story seemed a little flat... Was I finally too old for this story? Did I know it too well? Then I noticed some sentence structures were a bit clunky. ('All that they had so far suffered would pale beside the horrors that awaited them in the mountains' and 'My friend here is rather fond of seeing off bears'). Maybe it needed some more editing from a native English speaker?

Then, when Mariecke/Maria returns from gathering herbs with a bunch of 'henchmen' and I was wondering when she had become a villain needing henchmen, I decided to get out the original.

Well, no wonder the story felt a bit flat....

Here is a passage that describes Dolf coming into the camp on the evening after the first day the 7000 children had to cross a mountain pass:

For indeed, he now felt responsible for the children's crusade. For every accident, for every death he blamed himself. And today that burden had proved heavy. Through the tortuous miles of the gorge he had walked with but the one thought that he must get them all through safely. But he had failed. Right in front of his eyes he had seen a child fall into the stream and be carried away by the torrent. For two hours he had been frantically digging into the rock-slide with nothing but a stick and his bare hands – only to find one dead child. He had carried on his back children who had fallen down and when they were rested set them on their feet and picked up another. Had they all reached the end of the gorge safely? He could not tell. Dolf knew that Leonardo, like himself, was not sleeping.

Now the same passage in the original, translated by me (not a native English speaker, so cut me some slack).

Because it had come to this: he felt completely responsible for the children's crusade. Every accident, every death, he held himself accountable for. And today he'd had his share. All the difficult miles through the gorge he had had but one thought: 'I have to get all of them them through this safely.' But he had failed. Right before his eyes he had seen a child fall into the raging creek, swept away by the torrent to get smashed onto a rock in the riverbed. He had spent two hours frantically digging into a rock-slide with nothing but a stick and his bare hands, only to finally uncover a dead child. How many others were still buried, he could not guess, he only knew he'd lost them. He had helped crying children clamber over rocks and he had seen the ox die. He had sucked out a snake bite, uncertain if the snake had been venomous. And where was that little guy now? He had carried children on his back that had fallen down. He had put them down and picked up others. Had they all made it to the end of the gorge? Hadn't they accidentally left one behind? He had not been able to keep up with them all. Fifty, maybe a hundred children he knew by name and face. The thousands of others were just children, entrusted to his care. He could not tell them apart, there were too many of them.
The chaos in the camp shocked him. Night was threatening. The sky was still clouded, even if it had stopped raining and it was black as pitch. The still valley was rustling with hidden life, with stealthy dangers. A large fire would keep predators at bay, but the fires were going out. The tired wood gatherers had only gathered enough to cook dinner on. Packs of wolves, attracted to the smell of cooked meat and gnawed bones were silently stalking the perimeter of the camp. Dolf could see their eyes light up when they came close. Staggering through the camp he heard a child scream, but before he had reached the spot, silence had set back in. What had happened?
Occasionally, an arrow shot through the air, loosened by one of the orderlies. One time, Dolf heard the whining flight of an animal that had been shot. But there weren't enough orderlies, they fell asleep or nobody came to relieve them. Exhaustion and despair were sapping Dolf's strength. He had put Maria/Mariecke and a number of small children safely in the middle of the group, near the tent. And he knew that Leonardo was not sleeping either, but was doing his utmost to keep the camp safe, just like he was.

OMFG....

Somebody do a new translation of this book please, so I can stop crying.

So, the 5 stars are for the Dutch original. I have no words, or stars, for the English translation. I saw that the this edition still averages between 4 and 5 stars from other reviewers on goodreads, though, which shows you that a good story is pretty much indestructible, even when butchered in the translation. But, damn, it hurts.

The frame is a little awkward and the narrator feels a little obtrusive, but on the whole this is an excellent time travel story. I liked it a lot. If I was younger I might have loved it. Much of the information about the Children's Crusade was exciting and interesting, I think its a great choice for the incident in history that the main character time travels to. I also really liked that he wanted to go so he could see knights in armor and tournaments and he ended up spending most of his time with children and ordinary working people. Nice touch.

I guess I'm not giving it more stars because some of the time the places and people felt a little generic. They stopped in a village, or a town, but there was nothing to make that village or town much different from any other village or town. Some of the characters kind of felt like extras or spear carriers in an opera - sort of interchangeable. I guess I could have done with a little more vividness in the settings and characterizations. Still, a very good book, and recommended. I'm glad I read it.

Crusade in Jeans (1973) is a children's novel written by Thea Beckman. It contains a fictional account of the children's crusade of 1212, as witnessed by Rudolph Wega, a boy from the 20th century. The original Dutch title is Kruistocht in spijkerbroek.Rudolph Wega is a sixteen year-old who volunteers for an experiment with a time machine. The experiment goes well, but through an accident Rudolph is stranded in the 13th century. He saves the life of Leonardo Fibonacci, without realizing who he is, and teaches him Arabic numerals. Together they join the German Children's Crusade, and through his modern-day knowledge, Rudolph manages to save a lot of children from horrible fates. However, his knowledge also leads to accusations of witchcraft.In the book, two slavers delude a group of children into coming with them with stories of how the innocent shall liberate Jerusalem. Their actual intent is to sell them for profit. With the aid of his twentieth-century knowledge and skepticism, and the aid of a "magical" device or two (such as a box of matches), the boy manages to keep most of the children alive and eventually gets them to safety.I was drawn in by this book to a dangerous level. I was currently in Tokyo at the time and kept bumping into busy people rushing to the train because I couldn't put the book down.It captures a bit of wonder that is sometimes lost in the serious books of today. It's quite bittersweet, and you half expect the ending but then you're also kind of surprised by it too. I loved this book.