adults and children alike can learn from this book

books:


	• The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Caldecott Honor Book) Peter Sis Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2007 - 56 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Opening curtains

What a wonderful find this was! Meticulously drawn expose of life behind the iron curtain and the nature of the human spirit. A gem of a book and the grandchildren aren't getting their stickies on this!

left me wanting more

i read a handful of books over the holidays. this one hardly counts, since it took about a half hour to read. but i really enjoyed it. it's the illustrated autobiography of the author, who grew up in the prague, behind the iron curtain. he was an artist and musician, and the story tells what it was like to be a struggling artist in a repressed, controlled, communist state.

i loved his drawing style, which is comic-book-y, but with tons of detail. and the addition of selections from his journals adds a great sense of real-time to the text. if you like illustrated books, this is worth it.

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A Stirring Account

Imagine a life where you could only draw what the government said you could draw. A life where you couldn't listen to music or read books of your own choice, you couldn't grow your hair long, and you were asked to report your parents if they said anything negative about the government.

This was what life was like for Peter Sis and countless others who grew up in Cold War Era Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule.

Through journal entries, captions, and the story of a boy who loves to draw (Sis), we get an account of the Cold War era from 1948 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The boy in the book is allowed to draw anything he wants at home, but when he starts school, he can only draw what he's told to draw. We learn how easy it is to brainwash children who are encouraged to report their parents if they hear them say anything against the government. To Sis, this is the way life is until he gets wind of things he isn't allowed to know about: rock `n roll music, the Beatles, Elvis Presley. We then learn what it's like to be oppressed, to be denied freedom and get glimpses of Sis' dreams to be free.

Sis' graphic-novel like book effectively conveys tone through color. With black and white sketches, the only splashes of color are communist red and the colors in the boy's drawings. During the Prague Spring of 1968, the colors in the book brighten, demonstrating hope and cheerfulness--colors of freedom. But they quickly go back to the black and white drawings when the totalitarian regime comes back in full force.

A stirring book, I recommend this for older kids who are able to grasp the seriousness of the content and even high school students who are studying the Cold War.

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adults and children alike can learn from this book

very moving and well-presented children's book on some mature themes - young children today will not remember the cold war at all, but it is important to remember and understand what was happening behind the iron curtain.

Simplistic but powerful

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain is Peter Sís' autobiographical story of growing up in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Told primarily through simplistic, child-like drawings with side notes of a running timeline of the events during his childhood, you are given a simple but powerful account of what is was like to be a child and growing up in Czechoslovakia during this time.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

?I was born at the beginning of it all, on the Red side?the Communist side?of the Iron Curtain.? Through annotated illustrations, journals, maps, and dreamscapes, Peter Sís shows what life was like for a child who loved to draw, proudly wore the red scarf of a Young Pioneer, stood guard at the giant statue of Stalin, and believed whatever he was told to believe. But adolescence brought questions. Cracks began to appear in the Iron Curtain, and news from the West slowly filtered into the country. Sís learned about beat poetry, rock ?n? roll, blue jeans, and Coca-Cola. He let his hair grow long, secretly read banned books, and joined a rock band. Then came the Prague Spring of 1968, and for a teenager who wanted to see the world and meet the Beatles, this was a magical time. It was short-lived, however, brought to a sudden and brutal end by the Soviet-led invasion. But this brief flowering had provided a glimpse of new possibilities?creativity could be discouraged but not easily killed.

By joining memory and history, Sís takes us on his extraordinary journey: from infant with paintbrush in hand to young man borne aloft by the wings of his art.

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