Pjotr - Jan Terlouw

Pjotr is one of those Dutch children's literature classics that we were, uhm, encouraged to read while in primary school. It resulted in there being at least one copy of it in every classroom. Unfortunately, every year I ended up with a copy just before the end of the year, so I've read the beginning four times I believed without ever reaching the end.

 

It's the story of Pjotr, who's father is sent to prison in Siberia. He wants to visit him, but will have to travel through all of Russia.

 

While in the end I managed to read the book completely, it was never really one of my favorites. Even as I child I had some troubles with the believability of the story. I suppose that always starting over didn't help either for my reading experience. Still, it wasn't bad at all, and I think loads of people from my generation have read it.