Letters to Anyone and Everyone
Tellegen’s bizarre, moving and unfailingly poetic mental constructions generated a body of enthusiastic readers of all ages and won all major prizes for children’s literature. According to the index in Toon Tellegen’s collected animal stories 'Misschien wisten zij alles' (Perhaps They Knew Everything), there are 169 animals living in the Tellegen’s story-book woods. His favourites appear to be the hedgehog, the frog, the cricket, and the beetle. The squirrel, the ant, and the elephant crop up so frequently that it would be impossible to list all the page numbers.
Original title
Brieven aan niemand anders
Author
Toon Tellegen
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Toon Tellegen is the great liberator of words. He gives words a chance to unfold their wings, they put on a warm coat and go off to see the world. The result is a surrealistic tendency in Tellegen’s books, normal laws no longer apply, everything becomes new strange, funny, amazing.
NRC Handelsblad
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Toon Tellegen is an inventive and stylistically sensitive writer, with a very individual tone and beautiful use of language.
de Volkskrant
The author is a past master at simply and beautifully describing thoughts that are frivolous and profound in turn.
De Limburger
Toon Tellegen
Toon Tellegen (b. 1941), a GP by profession, became famous primarily for his poetic, philosophical animal stories about Squirrel, Ant, Mole, Hedgehog and the other animals, who are carefully trying to find their way in an incomprehensible world.