Match found in the German National Library.

Soyons claire: j'ai pas aimé. Ça sent à plein nez l'histoire faite pour plaire aux enfants, pour les amadouer. Alors ok, l'auteur fut un gars bien, qui milita pour le droit des enfants, il cherche ici peut-être à soutenir les enfants, à leur donner confiance. Très bien, mais bon, faut pas exagérer non plus.
Ainsi, en intro:

Les adultes ne comprendront pas.

Ben voilà, hop, torché, on peut étouffer toute critique d'adulte dans l'oeuf, habile le gars! Et un peu fayot avec les enfants, si vous voulez mon avis. (Ça m'énerve)
J'ai déjà lu des histoires pour enfants qui les valorisaient et pour autant ne les prenaient pas pour des neuneus... et les adultes non plus, qui plus est. Ici, il ne semble y avoir aucun souci de réalisme, de profondeur, de cette profondeur un peu mythique qu'on peut trouver dans d'autres histoires ou contes.

Par ailleurs, tout cela est terriblement genré.

Les filles recevront chaque année une poupée, et les garçons un canif.

HAHAHA! >.C'est aussi copieusement raciste.
Alors ok, c'est un livre écrit dans la première moitié du 20ème siècle, ça explique sans doute ces "extrémismes", assez généralisés à l'époque. Mais c'est pas pour autant que je vais aimer le livre.
( )

Yes, there are troublesome sections. But a great allegorical tale, particularly as a read-aloud in which you can discuss it with kids in terms of colonial attitudes/Noble Savage stuff. ( )

When Matt's father dies, the young boy - so young that he cannot yet write - finds himself crowned king, and embarking upon a journey that will take him from the battle-field to the state room, from the glittering capital cities of his neighbor kings, to the African jungle domain of the cannibal King Bum Drum. With many false starts - having his annoying ministers arrested, for instance, and then realizing he can't govern without them - Matt sets out to reform his country, establishing a constitutional monarchy, and (most revolutionary of all) attempting to ensure that children's rights are protected, by creating a Children's Parliament alongside the adult one, in order to give young people a voice. But despite all of his sincere efforts, Matt discovers too late that reforming (as the "Sad King" had warned him) is a dangerous business, and that envy, fear and discontent are powerful forces in the world...

Originally published in 1923, as Król Maciuś Pierwszy ("King Macius the First"), this classic of Polish children's literature is notable, not just for the story it contains - a story which incorporates its creator's ideas about pedagogical reform - but for the identity of its author. Janusz Korczak was the pen-name of Polish-Jewish pediatrician, author, and educational theorist Henryk Goldszmit, who, in the years prior to WWII, ran both a Catholic and a Jewish orphanage, and who, when offered a chance to escape the ghetto, and the Nazi Final Solution, refused to abandon the young Jewish orphans in his care, going to his death, with them, at the Treblinka death camp. Korczak's own story has been retold for children in such books as The Champion of Children: The Story of Janusz Korczak, and his immensely influential ideas about child development can be found in such works as When I Am Little Again and "The Child's Right to Respect".

That said, this is a deeply flawed book, ethically speaking, and I am rather surprised to see how infrequently any of the online reviews I have been reading, see fit to challenge (or even mention) the overt racism to be found in its pages. Bruno Bettelheim, who wrote the introduction to my edition, at least acknowledges that some might find the content problematic, although he goes on the offer the standard defense/apologia, claiming that King Matt the First was simply the product of its own time, and that people back then, in 1920s Poland (and elsewhere in Europe, one presumes) simply didn't know any better, when it came to the peoples of Africa, and (to a lesser extent) the 'Orient.' Ignorance as an excuse for... well, ignorance. And prejudice. I'm a little less blithe about the issue, however, and couldn't read any of the passages about the 'savage' 'cannibals' of Africa, without wincing. It isn't that they are depicted as terrible people - as Bettelheim correctly points out, King Bum Drum, and his daughter Klu Klu, are the only royals who don't betray Matt, and are depicted as genuinely moral - but the constant sense of patronizing condescension, the way in which Matt sets out to 'educate' them, and correct their cultural mistakes, is intensely grating, and constantly threw me out of the story. The preoccupation with cannibalism that can be seen in Korczak's work, even if tempered with a kinder depiction of the cannibals than is usually seen, is itself a marker of a colonialist mindset - yes, there were cannibals in Africa, but I'm not sure how widespread the practice was, and certainly do not believe that every culture and kingdom on the continent (as depicted here) was involved, until shown the error of their ways by the more civilized Europeans - and seems to surface rather frequently in the children's literature written before a certain point.

Still, I'm not one of these people who believes that ethically imperfect works of literature should be abandoned, if they have something to offer, artistically or intellectually, and despite the issue of the Africans' depiction here, I did find much of interest in King Matt the First, and am not sorry to have read it. The idea of giving children a say in their own governance, as enacted in the story, mirrors Korczak's methods in running his orphanages, which had parliaments as well. The notion that 'civilization,' as embodied by European monarchy, leads to a less moral people than the 'barbarism' of Africa - an argument that I think the author is making, and which might stand as an anti-racist counter-point to the unfortunate nature of his depiction of non-Europeans - is ground-breaking, for its time. I cannot say that I rushed through the book - sometimes I found it something of a struggle to stay involved - but then, I imagine that young readers might relish a tale in which the young are in charge (even if the results prove disastrous!), and the adults must obey. All in all, a book worth reading, if one bears in mind that it has problematic aspects. I would recommend it - with the caveat that adults should be available to discuss the outdated aspects of the tale - to young readers who enjoy adventure stories, and to anyone who appreciates more philosophical children's books. ( )

Here's a book I wish I enjoyed more.

It's a pretty dated little tale of a boy who becomes king and does things as king that king-children would do (like decree that every child in the kingdom should receive a pound of chocolate). He runs away to war, establishes a children's parliament, banishes his ministers ... There's a long subplot about his friend Bum Drum, king of the African cannibals, that probably played well in 1923 when it was originally published but not so much with the PC crowd now. All in all, it's a series of little adventures that ends rather sadly and abruptly when little King Matt's reforms backfire, he loses his kingdom and is banished to a desert island (after his death sentence is commuted). !! Not anything I'd be handing to any kids too soon.

BUT. In case you aren't steeped in Jewish history, Janusz Korczak, the author, started a children's orphanage for Jewish kids in Warsaw in 1910, one that sounds kinda close to Matt's kingdom (with a children's parliament and court system and all). In addition to being a doctor, this orphanage and the children it served became his life.

I think we all know how well the Jews of Warsaw fared during the Holocaust. Korczak was a prominent citizen and had mulitple opportunities to escape the Warsaw Ghetto but refused to leave behind the 200 kids he accompanied. In fact he followed them all the way to the gas chambers.

So reading this in my warm American home as a novel for well-fed American kids leaves me unmoved, but imagining them as escapist tales for Jewish orphans on the train to Treblinka leaves me ... moved.