Age Range: 9 and up

'Gadzooks!' said Dot ... 'The things that boy can do!'

Dot loves play-acting, dressing up her pet dachshund Piefke and making up words like 'splentastic'. Her best friend is Anton, who lives in a little apartment and looks after his mother.

They share a secret - every night, when their parents think they are asleep, they sell matches and shoelaces on the streets of Berlin with Dot's grumpy governess. But why?

The answers involve a villain called 'Robert the Devil', a club-wielding maid, a wobbly tooth, a pair of silver shoes and a policeman dancing the tango, as Dot and Anton get into all sorts of scrapes and even solve a crime in this delightful, touching and hilarious adventure story.

Translated by Antthea Bell.

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Erich Kästner, writer, poet and journalist, was born in Dresden in 1899.

His first children's book, Emil and the Detectives, was published in 1929 and has since sold millions of copies around the world and been translated into more than 60 languages. After the Nazis took power in Germany, Kästner's books were burnt and he was excluded from the writers' guild. He won many awards, including the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1960.

He died in 1974.

Walter Trier was born in Prague in 1880. After moving to Berlin, he became an acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator, and Kästner's collaborator on more than a dozen children's books. Forced to emigrate under Nazi rule, he died in 1951 in Ontario, Canada.

Anthea Bell was born in Suffolk in 1936.

An illustrious, award-winning translator, she was best known for her translations of the much-loved Asterix books and the work of Zweig and Sebald. She died in 2018.