LOOKING AT THE SKY

A child’s-eye view of Poland’s pioneering educator and child advocate, based on both research and memories shared by a student who knew him.

Looking very small and vulnerable in Rajunov’s neutral-toned panels, 7-year-old Izaak joins other young residents of Warsaw’s Dom Sierot (“Home of Orphans”). There, following a meeting with kindly Dr. Korczak—affectionately known to all as “Pan Doctor”—he experiences a life-changing regimen ranging from a newly healthful diet (“At lunch we had meat! Again!”) with special meals for the Sabbath on Friday night to stimulating rounds of play, chores, and learning that include even a formal court and a newspaper that are both run by children. Seven years later, in 1931, Izaak boards a ship for the long voyage to a new life in Canada. He loses touch with Pan Doctor after the Nazi invasion…and learns only after the war that he and 192 children in his keeping had been dispatched to a death camp. But in her afterword, Lewis writes that “Janusz Korczak would want to be remembered for the way he lived, not for the way he died,” and so closes her composite narrator’s vivid account with references to his profound respect for children and their ideas, while gently encouraging readers to “try not to think of what should be but what can be.”

A sensitive, uplifting tribute.