Reviewed byAnnelies Schoolderman
De genezing van de krekel, written by Toon Tellegen and published in 2009, has recently been translated into English by David Colmer as The Cricket’s Healing. It is the second book by Tellegen that Colmer has translated, after The Hedgehog’s Dilemma which came out in English in 2025. Like the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, The Cricket’s Healing is part of Toon Tellegen’s popular (and heartwarming) series of animal fables, which personify feelings such as loneliness or depression and asks us to think about how we treat each other and ourselves. Born in 1941 in Den Briel, Tellegen has carved a name for himself as a Dutch poet and writer of children’s literature. An international bestselling author, he was nominated for the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, and his lifetime work was honored by the Theo Thijssen Prize in 1997 and the Constantijn Huygens Prize in 2007.
While The Cricket’s Healing is aimed at adults, it draws heavily on Tellegen’s background as a children’s writer. It can almost trick someone into thinking it is a children’s book. The sentences are simple and the concepts are (seemingly) easy to grasp. However, a perceptive eye will unearth a deeper layer to Tellegen’s text. Behind his surreal metaphors and silly yet strange encounters between animals, we can find very real social commentary and a deep analysis of the landscape of the human mind.
Colmer’s translation unlocks Tellegen’s world for us, a world where it makes sense that a squirrel would be able to carry an elephant up a tree and that a snail would sprout wings and eclipse the sun. One day, the cricket, who usually chirps cheerfully and hops about, wakes up with a dark feeling in his head: “It’s an unbudgeable feeling, he thought. That’s it. He wasn’t sure if unbudgeable was a real word, but it was definitely how the feeling felt” (8). Given that the premise of the book hinges on this “unbudgeable” feeling, I was interested to see how Tellegen writes about it in the original: “Het was een onwrikbaar gevoel, dacht hij. Dat is het. Hij wist niet precies, maar wel ongeveer wat onwrikbaar was.” A literal translation of this would be: “It was an unwavering feeling, he thought. That’s it. He didn’t know for sure, just sort of, what unwavering meant.”
While Colmer could have opted for the word “unwavering” or even “unshakeable,” he chooses an adjective that sounds made up (yet is a real word): unbudgeable. I think this choice fits perfectly into the fantastical, childlike style of the novel. A new feeling has crept into the cricket’s head. It does not seem to be from this earth. Indeed, he wonders if it came from the moon. It makes sense that a rarely used, invented-sounding word would have to be employed for such a thing. Later, Colmer extends the moon-metaphor by translating modder as “sludge” rather than “mud” (19). This unbudgeable feeling is so unfamiliar that it can’t possibly be made of earthly matter like mud. Instead, it must be some sort of alien sludge.
Grappling with this unbudgeable feeling, the cricket wanders through the forest and talks to several animals. Beetle has been somber even longer than the cricket. He has decorative plates hanging on his walls with somber messages — “It’s great to be gloomy”; “There is nothing else”; “Whatever you do, stay sombre” — and he reads them everyday (36). He tells the cricket to simply submit to the somberness. The owl tells the cricket his unbudgeable feeling isn’t really so bad. There’s something far worse. The cricket trudges off feeling invalidated. The wood-mite has never felt anything before — just a pervasive numbness — and feels jealous of the cricket. Many of the other animals, too, have a morbid interest in the cricket’s depression. Salamander even tries to sell it.
Tellegen’s world may be dreamlike, absurd to the extreme, but it also has something very real to say about our society. When you become depressed, who remembers you? Who sends you letters? Who comes to visit? Who tells you you don’t actually have it that bad? Who tries to cheer you up? Who tries to monetize your sorrow? The novella invites us to notice the patterns in our society, the good and the bad, because once we notice something, we can act on it.
While the main focus of the story is the cricket’s journey to healing, there is a second character that stands out. The elephant’s storyline runs parallel to the cricket’s, and the entire time I was reading I was thinking to myself: Why is this elephant the only other animal that gets so much stage time (and in the 2005 opera-version of this story, The Cricket Recovers, it actually would be stage time)? Throughout the novella, the elephant climbs various trees, and each time… he falls out of them. An argument could be made that this urge to continuously climb is compulsive. In one chapter, when the elephant is sick, he says to the squirrel: “But what if something terrible happened because I wasn’t climbing?” (88). Climbing in order to neutralize this fear is certainly in line with conditions such as OCD. Additionally, fearing that he may suddenly have “lost the knack” for climbing trees sounds like an intrusive thought (89).
However, I don’t think OCD is at the heart of the elephant’s story because apart from this chapter, his relationship with climbing and falling doesn’t seem to be associated with anxiety at all. When Climbing is personified later in the story, it is described as a “small, elegant figure” (117). Climbing’s physicality is the opposite of the cricket’s big unbudgeable feeling. While cricket considers depression to be separate from himself — a sinister entity — the elephant “felt his face glowing with joy” when Climbing said it belonged to him (117). The elephant embraces Climbing as part of his identity.
In my reading, the true purpose of the elephant’s story is to provide nuance to the cricket’s. The elephant reminds us that not all pain is bad. We shouldn’t stop climbing just because we might fall. When we feel in control of our thoughts and emotions, when we feel safe in our bodies even when we fall, it builds resilience, and we are able to learn from it and keep pursuing our goals. Indeed, when the longhorn beetle suggests he take to the water so it will be impossible to fall, the elephant becomes glum. The water represents our comfort zone — if we never take a risk, we will stagnate. The elephant’s story exemplifies the resilience we hope the cricket will be able to build.
With a childlike humor and philosophical bent, The Cricket’s Healing asks us to reflect on how we treat others and to find compassion for ourselves. The cricket’s journey through depression is portrayed tenderly and honestly. The reader unravels right alongside the cricket and then finds their way to the discovery that maybe, just maybe, the feeling that once felt unbudgeable might be budgeable after all.
Tellegen, Toon. The Cricket’s Healing. Translated by David Colmer. Pushkin Press, 2026.
Annelies Schoolderman grew up between Minnesota and the Netherlands. At Oberlin College, she studies Creative Writing and Literary Translation (Class of 2027). Her poetry has been published in the Oberlin Review, Wilder Voice Magazine, and SIEVA Magazine. Additionally, an excerpt she translated from Nina Polak’s Country Life has appeared in Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. You can find her on Instagram @kastanje27.
Works Cited
Hirs, Rozalie. “Richard Ayres: The Cricket Recovers (2005) – Us Premiere – Rozalie Hirs.” Rozalie.com, 2019, rozalie.com/richard-ayres-the-cricket-recovers-2005-us-premiere/
“De Genezing van de Krekel.” Amazon.nl, 2026, lezen.amazon.nl/sample/B00NXZ5I9C?clientId=share
“Toon Tellegen.” New York Review Books, 2023, http://www.nyrb.com/collections/toon-tellegen
“Toon Tellegen.” Poetryinternational.com, 2026, http://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-6431_Tellegen