Written and Illustrated by Peter Sís
New York: Frances Foster Books, 2007.
The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain is an auto-biographical picture book written and illustrated by Peter Sís and was published in 2007. Sís wrote The Wall because, when his children as young teenagers asked him what it was like to grow up in the communist city of Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the Cold War he found that it was difficult to explain how he wasn’t allowed to draw what he wanted in school, or listen to rock and roll, and how America seemed so much brighter and full of hope compared to his life. So he wrote and illustrated this book instead, using his own journal entries, photographs, and paintings to help remember.
The book follows Sís as he draws his way through life from birth, through his childhood, and into young adulthood. It tells the author’s story in a simple way that younger children can enjoy, but it also has content such as definitions and history that will probably only be fully appreciated by children that are a little older, probably in the mid to upper elementary grades. Thought the main character is a boy, I think that anyone of any age can appreciate and learn from this book.
The illustrations are complex and full of details despite the fact that most are only in black and white and red, which emphasizes the conformity and national loyalty that the Czechoslovakian people were expected to display. This book would not have worked without the illustrations. The protagonist’s artwork and dreams are always bright and full of color and therefore very clearly breaking the rules. Sometimes the color is hiding in corners, in fact there is only one full color illustration in the book, which is the type of drawing that he had to hide and he was full of hope, compared with another that depicts the kind of things he was supposed to draw in elementary school, and the dark events that happened when censorship resumed after a brief period of more freedom.
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