no pretty pictures :: essays research papers

"Nominated for a 1998 study Book Award for Young Peoples Literature, No Pretty Pictures A pip-squeak of War is Anita Lobels gripping memoir of surviving the Holocaust. A Caldecott-winning illustrator of such pretty picture books as On Market Street, it is difficult to believe Lobel endured the dire childhood she did. From age 5 to age 10, Lobel spent what are speculate to be carefree years concealing from the Nazis, protecting her younger brother, existence captured and marched from camp to camp, and surviving completely dehumanizing conditions. A frighten bosh by any measure, Lobels memoir is all in all the more haunting as told from the first-person, childs-eye view. Her maidenhood voice tells it equivalent it is, without irony or even complete understanding, unless with matter-of-fact honesty and astonishing attention to detail. She carves vivid, enduring images into readers minds. On privateness in the attic of the ghetto "We were always told to be very qui et. The whispers of the trapped grown-ups sounded like the noise of insects rubbing their legs together." On being discovered while hiding in a convent "They lined us up facing the wall. I looked at the dark red bricks in front of me and waited for the shots. When the shouting go on and the shots didnt come, I noticed my breath hanging in thin puffs in the air." On trying not to draw the attention of the Nazis "I sine qua noned to shrink away. To fold into a small invisible thing that had no detectable smell. No breath. No flesh. No sound."It is a miracle that Lobel and her brother survived on their own in this world that any adult would find unbearable. Indeed, and appropriately, on that point are no pretty pictures here, and adults choosing to share this story with younger readers should exact themselves readily available for explanations and comforting words. (The camps are full of excrement and death, all faithfully recorded in direct, unsparing language .) But this is a story that must be told, from the shocking beginning when a young miss watches the Nazis march into Krakow, to the final words of Lobels epilogue "My life has been good. I want more." (Ages 10 to 16) --Brangien Davis From Booklist Gr. 6-12. The truth of the childs viewpoint is the strength of this Holocaust subsister story, told with physical immediacy and no "pride of victimhood." Lobels ebullient, gorgeously colored illustrated books--from the Caldecott adore Book On Market Street (1982) to Toads and Diamonds (1996)--give no hint of her dark, terrifying childhood.