Book-A-Day Almanac

On June 17, 1969, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, ten months after the Soviet Union invaded the city with tanks, the Beach Boys gave a concert in Lucerna Hall. Although police with dogs waited nearby, in this dark time the American band provided “a glimmer of hope.”

Peter Sís, recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, captured these events, the history of his native country, and his own journey as an artist in the 2007 title The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. Both a Caldecott Honor book and winner of the Sibert Award, this incredible book begins with endpapers showing the map of the world, filled in with red to indicate Communist countries. As Sís tells us in his introduction, he was born at the beginning of the Cold War, “on the Red side—the Communist side—of the Iron Curtain.” The first picture is of a baby, with pen and pencil in hand, with the caption “As long as he could remember, he had loved to draw.”

In intricate black-and-white sketches, occasionally marked with red, Sís shows his development as a child and an artist, as well as what life was like for those who lived in Czechslovakia. Some of the incidents, like collecting scrap metal, would not have been experienced by American children during this period. Others, like hiding under the desk in preparation for a nuclear attack, happened in the U.S. as well. Sís grows up to be an adolescent when “everything from the West seems colorful and desirable.” He loved American music and he and his friends made their own electric guitars. In the spring of 1968, everything seemed possible under the new, enlightened leadership of Alexander Dubek. Then the Soviet tanks invaded, and Sís found that the content of his drawings could be used against him. But as the book ends, “Sometimes dreams come true. On November 9, 1989, the wall fell.” Artist and filmmaker Peter Sís found his way to America, made a home here, and eventually earned millions of adoring fans for his drawings and his books.

This extraordinary book presents a social study lesson of the Cold War in forty-eight pages. A superb book trailer makes the perfect introduction to the book as it combines actual video footage from the time period with drawings from The Wall. Any student from fourth grade through high school who wants to understand not only the events of the Cold War but the emotional effect of growing up behind the Iron Curtain can do no better than begin their reading here.

Even in the United States, Peter Sís has followed his own direction and vision by creating illustrated books that work for a wide range of readers. After picking up The Wall, those who did not know his struggle will simply be grateful, as I have always been, that he persevered in what he wanted to do. Although the events that he describes took place in Europe years ago, they remind us to fight against censorship, in all of its forms, here and now in America.

Here’s a page from The Wall: