The Wall

Starred review from July 9, 2007
Born out of a question posed to Sís (Play, Mozart, Play!
) by his children (“Are you a settler, Dad?”), the author pairs his remarkable artistry with journal entries, historical context and period photography to create a powerful account of his childhood in Cold War–era Prague. Dense, finely crosshatched black-and-white drawings of parades and red-flagged houses bear stark captions: “Public displays of loyalty—compulsory
. Children are encouraged to report on their families and fellow students. Parents learn to keep their opinions to themselves.” Text along the bottom margin reveals young Sís’s own experience: “He didn’t question what he was being told. Then he found out there were things he wasn’t told.” The secret police, with tidy suits and pig faces, intrude into every drawing, watching and listening. As Sís grows to manhood, Eastern Europe discovers the Beatles, and the “Prague Spring of 1968” promises liberation and freedom. Instead, Soviet tanks roll in, returning the city to its previous restrictive climate. Sís rebels when possible, and in the book’s final spreads, depicts himself in a bicycle, born aloft by wings made from his artwork, flying toward America and freedom, as the Berlin Wall crumbles below. Although some of Sís’s other books have their source in his family’s history, this one gives the adage “write what you know” biting significance. Younger readers have not yet had a graphic memoir with the power of Maus
or Persepolis
to call their own, but they do now. Ages 8-up.

Starred review from August 1, 2007
Gr 4 Up-Personal, political, passionatethese are among the qualities that readers have come to appreciate about Sí s's autobiographical books such as "The Three Golden Keys" (Doubleday, 1994) and "Tibet through the Red Box" (Farrar, 1998). This layered foray into family and Czech history begins with succinct sentences at the bottom of each page. Captions accompanying the artarranged in panels of varying sizefill in more details. The pacing and design of the compositions create their own rhythm, contributing much to the resulting polyphony. Sí s immediately engages even his youngest audience with a naked, cherubic self-portrait, colored pencil in hand. The ensuing scenes of home and community life in Prague, rendered predominantly in black and white, are punctuated with Communist red and tiny fragments of color as the young artist experiments in the face of rigid conformity. The third-person narration achieves an understatement that helps to mitigate the more disturbing descriptions found in his double-spread journal entries. Bordered by Sí s's youthful art, photographs, and propaganda posters, these selections depict his reality behind the Iron Curtain from 1954 to 1977. The recurring themes of music and art as important vehicles of self-expression, and the relationship between a government's inclination to embrace or suppress that creativity and the state's vitality, will resonate with teens. This celebration of the arts climaxes in a full-color spread à la Peter Max. Complex, multifaceted, rich in detail, this book shares the artist's specific heritage while connecting to universal longings. His concluding visions of freedom are both poignant and exhilarating."Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2007
In an autobiographical picture book that will remind many readers of Marjane Satrapis memoir Persepolis (2003), S-s latest, a powerful combination of graphic novel and picture book, is an account of his growing up in Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule. Written in several stands, the somewhat fragmented narrative never dilutes the impact of the boldly composed panels depicting scenes from S-s infancy through young adulthood. Throughout, terrific design dramatizes the conflict between conformity and creative freedom, often through sparing use of color; in many cases, the dominant palette of black, white, and Communist red threatens to swallow up young Peters freely doodled, riotously colored artwork. The panels heighten the emotional impact, as when S-s fleeing the secret police, emerges from one spreads claustrophobic, gridlike sequence into a borderless, double-page escape fantasy. Even as they side with Peter against fearsome forces beyond his control, younger readers may lose interest as the story moves past his childhood, and most will lack crucial historical context. But this will certainly grab teenswho will grasp both the history and the passionate, youthful rebellions against authorityas well as adults, many of whom will respond to the Cold War setting. Though the term picture book for older readers has been bandied about quite a bit, this memorable title is a true example.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 1, 2007
The personal meets the political in this absorbing autobiographical picture book from Czech emigre Sis. Born in 1949, just as Czechoslovakia fell under communist rule and Soviet domination, Sis evokes the childhood of a born artist ("as long as he could remember, he had loved to draw") in a country where restrictions on what an artist could do grew along with him, where a child's love for drawing shapes and people was channeled, at school, into drawing tanks and hammer-and-sickles. While the brief main text of each page describes Sis's own experiences ("Slowly he started to question. He painted what he wanted to -- in secret"), small captions illuminate the thumbnail pictures of conditions in the country. Strategically accented with red stars and flags, these black ink drawings, sometimes four or six to a page, are almost entirely composed of short, stuttering horizontal pen strokes. The technique is all the more effective for the contrast it allows to Sis's -- and Czechoslovakia's -- expansive forays into freedom, like the full-color double-page spread depicting the Prague Spring of 1968, which blossoms with images of John Lennon, a Yellow Submarine, and a star-dappled winged horse at the end of a rainbow. The deployment of media choices and color throughout the book is both expert and telling: bold, stark black marker for an invading Soviet tank, dreamy blue crayon for the night the Beach Boys played Prague. It's a surprisingly comprehensive portrait of an era, an artist, and the persistence of the latter in the face of the former.

(Copyright 2007 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)