JANUSZ KORCZAK’S CHILDREN

The Polish Jewish writer and educator Janusz Korczak was best known for his medical career and the orphanage he developed and directed under a progressive educational philosophy harboring children’s rights. Focused on the importance of childhood, Korczak was at the height of his much-respected career, with a radio show and published articles and books for both adults and children, when the Nazis invaded Poland and displaced the Jews to the Warsaw ghetto. Ever cognizant of the children’s well-being and fears, Korczak stayed with them, accompanying them to certain death in Treblinka, even when an officer, who valued the author’s children’s stories, offered to save just him. The brown-and-gray toned, often crude and graceless acrylics portray scenes of Korczak’s life and surroundings as outlined in the sometimes undemonstrative, stilted yet easy-to-read text. A lackluster rendering when compared with David Adler’s A Hero and the Holocaust, illustrated by Bill Farnsworth (2002). (afterword, chronology, bibliography) (Biography. 7-10)