Dolf Verroen (95), children’s book writer:
‘Tonke and I had a somewhat difficult relationship. She had a wonderful way with people. One moment she hugged you and the next she said goodbye. When she won an important German literature prize and I told her she had already won it, she was indignant.
‘She was not someone who lived quietly, her childhood in Indonesia and in the Japanese prison camp was difficult, she has told me that sometimes. I think she was very lonely all her life in that big apartment, with all her collages and doll houses. My image of her changed after the Netflix film adaptation. The letter for the king.. She later said in an interview that her book had been raped. She didn’t care about success. She was worried about her books. A writer par excellence.
“I visited her last year together with Rindert Kromhout. We took a photo holding hands. Then things turned out well after all. I told her about one time that I was on a reading trip through Germany and the owner of a bookstore asked me: ‘Who is the queen of Dutch literature?‘So I asked, ‘Do you mean Annie MG Schmidt?’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘Tonke Dragt.’ Yes, she was: a Queen of Literature.’
Sjoerd Kuyper (72), children’s book writer:
‘Tonke Dragt has been enormously important for children’s literature, she has hardly been surpassed. There are simply people you have to read because they are so far above the rest. That applies to Dragt. When I was a child I did. The letter for the king. Unfortunately I haven’t read it. But then I read it three times, the last time four years ago. And I still thought it was the most beautiful thing. It says quite a lot that, as a man in his sixties, I still found it so wonderful.
‘The letter for the king’ It’s a timeless book. That’s because it takes place in a fictional time, in a fictional world, but also because it’s written in a way that still holds up. What made her so exceptionally good is that she could write realistically in fantasy situations. That fantasy is unbridled and goes in all directions. But her stories somehow don’t turn into fairy tales. Anything could really be possible in that fantasy of hers. She was the best in that regard.
“I think she got the recognition she deserved. Her book is also very popular in England and she was welcomed like a queen. And it’s not for nothing that she got a Netflix series. So it’s fantastic that she lived to be so old, because that recognition came quite late.
‘I get a very warm feeling when I think of her. She was very collegial. Like: as children’s book writers, we are all guardians of the soul, let’s be a little nice to each other. When I won a Gouden Griffel in 1997, she sent me a package containing a bottle of gold glitter. There was a note on it, in which she wrote: ‘To get used to the colour.’ After all these years, I am happier with that bottle than with Granger itself. It has a very prominent place in my trophy cabinet. Dragt has meant an awful lot to three or four generations of Dutch people.
Pieter Koolwijk (50), author of the Children’s Book Week Gift 2024:
‘I didn’t read any Tonke Dragt books when I was a kid, so I actually feel like I shouldn’t say anything about her, but at the same time I’d like to say something about her because if there’s one thing that has influenced me culturally it’s the series. The Zevensprongwhich was broadcast weekly on television in the early 1980s. I was about 8 years old and watched it with my older brother. That teacher who initially just stands in front of the class but then ends up in a castle, it was great, that magic made a big impression. When I was about 12, I read the book and was captivated again. As a children’s book writer, I also want to evoke that feeling of magic.
‘Last year I was with Yorick Goldewijk on a podcast by Edward van de Vendel, in which he reads and discusses classics with other writers, and then we read The towers of February from 1973. I really enjoyed it, it’s so excellent that I can really recommend that book to everyone. What makes it so good is a difficult question for me. I think it’s mainly the believability of the main character, combined with, again, magic. Something magical happens, something that is actually impossible, and yet as a reader you completely accept it.
‘I really recognise his fantasy, that of searching for something behind everything; although it is not really a ‘search’, you just see something and immediately see the touch of specialness that surrounds it, which immediately makes you work. That’s what happens to me and I think the same thing happened to Tonke Dragt.’
