Synopses & Reviews
The Nazis may have taken their home, but the family still has a guardian angel
In this emotionally rich story, a little girl and her family live happily in Paris until Nazi soldiers arrive druing World War II. She and her family must flee or risk being sent to a concentration camp, so they run into the woods, where they meet resistance fighters. But they're still not safe. They must cross tall mountains and sail in a rickety boat to England. Yet the whole time they're struggling to survive, the little girl thinks of the stone angel near their apartment in Paris and imagines it watching over her family.
Offering a never-before-told story of the Holocaust, Jane Yolen returns to the material she mined in the award-winning THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC. Filled with sorrow, hope, comfort, and triumph, this gorgeously illustrated book is sure to become a modern classicoffering adults a perfect vehicle with which to share a difficult subject.
Review
"This brilliant and disturbing rendition of an old Czech opera honors history in a stunning piece of art....A heartbreaking, hopeful masterpiece." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
When Aninku and Pepicek discover one morning that their mother is sick, they rush to town for milk to make her better. Their attempt to earn money by singing is thwarted by a bullying, bellowing hurdy-gurdy grinder, Brundibar, who tyrannizes the town square and chases all other street musicians away.
Befriended by three intelligent talking animals and three hundred helpful schoolkids, brother and sister sing for the money, buy the milk, defeat the bully, and triumphantly return home.
Brundibar is based on a Czech opera for children that was performed fifty-five times by the children of Terezin, the Nazi concentration camp.
Synopsis
From the legendary imagination of Maurice Sendak--creator of beloved classic Where the Wild Things Are--comes a classic tale of children cleverly overcoming a bully, retold by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner.
Brundibar is based on a 1938 Czech opera for children that was performed fifty-five times by the children of Terezin, the Nazi concentration camp. When Aninku and Pepicek discover one morning that their mother is sick, they rush to town for milk to make her better. Their attempt to earn money by singing is thwarted by a bullying, bellowing hurdy-gurdy grinder, Brundibar, who tyrannizes the town square and chases all other street musicians away. Befriended by three intelligent talking animals and three hundred helpful schoolkids, brother and sister sing for the money to buy the milk, defeat the bully, and triumphantly return home.
"An ambitious picture book that succeeds both as a simple children's story and as a compelling statement against tyranny." --School Library Journal
About the Author
Tony Kushner's plays include
A Bright Room Called Day;
The Illusion;
Angels In America, Parts One and Two;
Slavs!;
Hydrotaphia;
Homebody/Kabul; and adaptations of Goethe's
Stella, Brecht's
The Good Person of Setzuan, and Ansky's
The Dybbuk. His work has been produced at theatres around the United States and in over thirty countries around the world. He is the recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1993 and 1994 Tony Awards for Best Play, among other awards.
Maurice Sendak received the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are. In 1970 he received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Illustration, in 1983 he received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association, and in 1996 he received a National Medal of Arts in recognition of his contribution to the arts in America. In March 2003, Sendak received the first Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, an annual international prize for children's literature established by the Swedish government.