Das fliegende Klassenzimmer

A quintessential German coming of age story, about children in an all-boys boarding school discovering friendship, courage, empathy, and so much more.

I found it tremendously powerful because it conveys these concepts not with the raised finger of a preacher, but through the lived experience of the boys and their teachers themselves. As such, they are not perfect, they are loud, self-absorbed, boisterous, but when it matters they stick up for each other, they show bravery and kindness and gratefulness and mercy. It's like the reader finds themselves once again in school, reliving their own youth, recognizing their own failures and struggles and successes and learning once more what it takes to grow up a decent person.

Kästner writes beautiful German prose, observant and vivid and yet straight to the point. A wonderful book.