What We've Been Reading: "Momo" by Michael Ende

Not to sound like a hipster, but you've probably never heard of it.  The only reason that I have is because of my exchange year in Germany.  My German teacher didn't know quite what to do with me since my German language skills weren't good enough to keep up with the literature the rest of the class was reading, so she gave me a stack of children's books to read, among them was Momo, by Michael Ende (best known in the U.S. for The Never Ending Story).   I remember that I enjoyed the book, and that my host siblings were delighted that I was reading it and couldn't wait to show me the film version, which I also enjoyed.  But in the years since then I forgot about the book, until the sight of a bald man in a grey suit on a TV show we were watching jogged my memory, and I began hunting for an English translation for my children.

Momo is set in a sleepy Italian town in the mid-twentieth century.  The title character is a homeless orphan girl who arrives one day and takes up residence in the ruins of a Roman coliseum.  Charmed by the mysterious girl's kindness and her ability to listen patiently to anyone's problems,  the people who live nearby all agree to  contribute to Momo's care, even though they are poor and just barely getting by themselves.  The neighborhood children soon discover that Momo has a gift for coming up with wonderful games of make believe, and soon she has lots of friends.  Life in the unnamed town is simple and happy until the Men in Grey appear.  These strange men begin visiting the townspeople one by one, convincing them of the need to work harder and to stop wasting time on unimportant things.  But rather than helping the people of the town to be more efficient, the Grey Men are stealing away their spare time, leaving them with time only for work and nothing left for the joy of friends and family.  It falls to Momo, the only one in town not caught up in the time saving craze, to find a way to stop the Grey Men and restore the people of the town to the way they were.

As you can probably tell, the book is a sort of fable about the perils of materialism, about what people lose when they become too caught up in the pursuit of progress and efficiency.  But the story is told in such a charming way, and with such likable characters that you don't feel like you're being hit in the face with a message.  The book is almost completely non-violent, with no fighting and no deaths.  There is some mild menacing behavior (resulting in what is probably the slowest chase scene in all of fiction), but the danger is mostly of a spiritual nature.

This book is appropriate for independent readers about 10 and up (and I do mean "up." My teens all enjoyed it)  If you're reading out loud, I'd guess about 7, maybe younger, as long as they are able to pay attention to a longer story that takes multiple sittings.