Language: Dutch. Deutsche Übersetzung hier.

Midas Dekkers, a famous Dutch biologist, researches the role of children in nature and culture. Dekkers makes us aware of the two roles homo sapiens play in the course of life. Just like a caterpillar turning into a beautiful butterfly, human beings have their own metamorphosis: small children transform into grown-up adolescents.

Children and adolescents are different creatures, who sometimes (but far from always) have the same wishes and issues. Children live separated from adolescents in their own world of kindergarten, school and sports clubs, read their own books, and visit their own amusement parks and playfarms. Until they pupate into an explosion of pop music and acne, called puberty.

Many adults have the desire to go back to the other side of the generation gap. At home they don't read Ovid, but Harry Potter, for instance. It's like butterflies crawling back into their cocoon. The morale is obvious: growth comes always at the expense of something else, and the human race is no exception thereto.

Interesting book by an author who is well known to every child AND adult in The Netherlands. People who are expecting their first offspring (like me when I read it) will turn the pages of De larf with special interest.