The book has earned the status of the most famous Hungarian novel in the world. It has been translated into many languages and in several countries is a mandatory or recommended reading in schools. Ernő Nemecsek is now ranked in those schools among the eternal heroes of youth literature, such as Oliver Twist or Tom Sawyer.[citation needed]
Erich Kästner took up the theme of two groups of boys conducting a "war" and using all the terminology of militarism and nationalism in "The Flying Classroom", published just before the Nazi takeover of Germany. Kästner was, however, less harsh with the character resembling Nemecsek, who in Kästner's version suffers no more than a broken leg.
In Israel the book, in Hebrew translation, was highly popular in the 1940s and 1950s, and recently a new translation was published. The Israeli left-wing columnist Haim Bar'am, of the Kol Ha'ir weekly in Jerusalem, wrote: "The highest praise which I can bestow on a pure-hearted, idealistic person is to compare him or her to Nemecsek. I don't often do that, only when I feel that somebody truly deserves the ultimate compliment."
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