Readers follow a child through wordless scenes that suggest famous paintings and occasionally incorporate sculptural and architectural wonders.
The child sleeps in an off-kilter van Gogh bedroom, into which a starry night seeps—literally—through the window. Awakening to a Dalí timepiece, the child shuffles down the hall to a Duchamp “fountain” (clearly depicted as a urinal). Descending the Escher staircase, the kid greets a Modigliani mom, whose outstretched hand containing an apple obscures the face of a Magritte dad. So it goes until the protagonist arrives at and makes a contribution to a towering sculpture composed of bits and pieces of the art previously viewed. According to the jacket flap, this was originally published in Italy for a festival celebrating European art, both past and future. The inspirations, identified in a concluding spread, are by white, mostly male artists, primarily from the 19th and 20th centuries. The protagonist likewise presents white and male. Guasco creates graphic unity by imposing an overarching futurist or cubist aesthetic on his colorful compositions, employing stylized figures and geometric forms. Does this succeed as a children’s book? Wordless books offer valuable opportunities for inventing narrative, and this one is no exception. Artistically inclined adults and older children will enjoy the challenge of finding all the embedded references; others will simply be perplexed.
Short on plot and strong on design, the book relies on the eye of the beholder for its success. (Picture book. 4-12, adult)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5539-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
Gratz (Refugee, 2017, etc.) weaves together fictionalized accounts of individual experiences of D-Day, the “beginning of the end of the Second World War.”
The action begins just before dawn on June 6, 1944, and ends near midnight that same day. Six different operations in settings across Europe, each fictionalized with imagined characters but based on true events, exemplify the ordinary people in extraordinary situations who risked or gave their lives to destroy what Gen. Eisenhower styled “the German war machine” and “Nazi tyranny.” The narrative moves from scene to scene as the day marches on—a sea invasion, French citizens and Resistance fighters on land, and soldiers arriving by air—but repeatedly returns to Dee, a German fighting on the American side and hiding his German identity from comrades like Sid, a Jewish American determined to wipe out the Germans even as he suffers insults from his peers. The vigorously diverse cast is historically accurate but unusual for a World War II novel, including a young Algerian woman, a white Canadian, a Cree First Nations lance corporal from Quebec, British soldiers, a black American medic, and a Frenchwoman. The horrors of war and the decisions and emotions it entails are presented with unflinching honesty through characters readers can feel for. In the end, all the threads come together to drive home the point that allies are “stronger together.”
Both an excellent, inclusive narration of important historical events and a fast-paced, entertaining read. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-24572-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2020 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
