Peter van Gestel

Peter van Gestel (1937-2019) made a name for himself in the Netherlands as a scriptwriter for radio and television. In the late 1970s, he started writing for children of about eleven and up in a weekly magazine and later on a newspaper.

Children's books

His main characters are lively young oddballs who have not yet made the choice between conforming and remaining somewhat of an outsider. They observe others often in taciturn astonishment. Van Gestel is strong on dialogue, his use of language is highly individual, while at the same time coming over as real vernacular. He has a great sense of humour and a finely honed insight into the psychology of his characters. His books have won many awards. The diaries of Ko Kruier, earned Van Gestel both a Silver Pencil award and the Nienke van Hichtum Prize. For Winterijs (Winter Ice, 2001), he received three Dutch awards: the Gouden Griffel, the Woutertje Pieterse Prize and the Nienke van Hichtum Prize. In 2006 Van Gestel received the Theo Thijssen Prize for his oeuvre.

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Peter van Gestel

Winter Ice

Ten-year old Thomas Vrij suffers from a great sadness. He hides it from others; otherwise they would just feel concerned about him. And he doesn’t want that, quite the opposite. So he never complains about anything. Not about his cold knees covered in scabs, his hunger, or being bullied at school, nor the fact that his mother died from typhoid just after liberation and that his father has never got over it. He would rather make up stories about dogs stuck fast, frozen in the ice, using big words such as ‘wretched’ and ‘marvellous’. His classmate, Piet de Zwaan, who is called Piem at home, is the prototype of a professor who knows everything but gives nothing away. Nevertheless, Thomas discovers that Zwaan was in hiding during the war in a room all by himself, somewhere in Deventer, and that his parents were taken away by the Germans.

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