Kobi

by Mary Buff, Conrad Buff

A description of what life was like for a boy growing up in rural northern Switzerland around 1910.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Mary Buff, formerly known as Mary Marsh, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 10, 1890. Mary had an early interest in arts and poetry but only continued to study art. She studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and at the Cincinnati Art Academy and received her bachelor's degree in Kansas at Bethany College. Mary then lived in Albion, Idaho and in the 1920s settled in Los Angeles. In 1922 she married Conrad Buff. Mary was the assistant curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her income was large enough to allow her husband, Conrad Buff, to paint full-time. After marrying Conrad Buff, Mary gave up her pursuit of painting to write children`s books with him. She died in 1970.

Reviews

[Capn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh for an affordable original hardcover of this! Gorgeous illustrations and a sweet and simple story of Kobi (nickname for Jakob), a boy of Appenzell, and his transition into a proper shepherd boy.

This is a FREE READ on OpenLibrary, and is recommended for anyone headed to Appenzell, for boys who refuse to read Heidi By Johanna Spyri: With Classic Illustrations Part 1 & 2 (in that case, I'd also recommend A Bell for Ursli: A Story from the Engadine in Switzerland, though do Kobi first!), and for anyone interested in Switzerland, keeping in mind that as quaint and traditional as Appenzell is, it's very niche - a bit like Texas being representative of Texas rather than the USA as a whole.

Switzerland in Juvenile fiction is my strong suit, so I've created a Listopia list for it, and on the header of that list have made recommendations of the TOP FREE READS set in Switzerland. I'm honestly considering knocking down Heidi to spot #2 to put this one at the top. It's not as good as a story, but with the shorter attention span of modern kids taken into account, this one hits all of the traditional high notes (Heidi is set in the very nearby village of Maienfeld, in the canton of Graubünden, next to the two Appenzeller cantons; A Bell for Ursli / Schellenursli is also in Graubünden, but in a unique region known as the Engadine. If you read these three, you'll have Eastern Switzerland well covered. But for such a small country, you'll soon realise that there is serious cultural, language and landscape variation! See the comment section of the Switzerland in Juvenile Fiction list for recommendations by region https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...).

[Larry Wegman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice description of what life was like for a boy growing up in rural northern Switzerland around 1910. This life could easily have been that of one of my grandfather's younger siblings had they not come to America about then.