Hardcover, 238 pages
English language
Published March 17, 1974 by Burke.
The Neverending Story is Michael Ende's best-known book, but Momo, published six years earlier, is the all-ages fantasy novel that first won him wide acclaim. After the sweet-talking gray men come to town, life becomes terminally efficient. Can Momo, a young orphan girl blessed with the gift of listening, vanquish the ashen-faced time thieves before joy vanishes forever? With gorgeous new drawings by Marcel Dzama and a new translation from the German by Lucas Zwirner, this all-new 40th anniversary edition celebrates the book's first U.S. publication in over 25 years.
Momo has got to be the best children's story for adults that you'll ever read. As a child, it was a great adventure book that managed to explain some of the complexities of the adult world to me. As an adult, it's the novel to underline just how useless and limiting many of these complexities are.
Every so often a book appears at just the right time; or, perhaps more accurately, I pick it up at just the right time after years on my to-read pile. Momo was enchanting and so perfectly relevant. All about listening, kindness, attention, love, and our brief time on Earth. A little heavyhanded, and admittedly not really a five, but I'm giving it five anyway.
