Tibet Through the Red Box: Through the Red Box (Caldecott Honor Book)Peter Sis
Gebundene Ausgabe
As a child in 1950s Czechoslovakia, Caldecott Honor-winning artist Peter Sís would listen to mysterious tales of Tibet, "the roof of the world. " The narrator, oddly enough, was his father-a documentary filmmaker who had been separated from his crew, caught in a blizzard, and (according to him, anyway) nursed back to health by gentle Yetis. Young Sís learned of a beautiful land of miracles and monks beset by a hostile China; of the 14th Dalai Lama, a " Boy-God-King"; and of "a magic palace with a thousand rooms-a room for every emotion and heart's desire. " Hearing these accounts-some extravagant but all moving-helped the boy recover from an accident. The stories also allowed Sís's father to relate an odyssey other adults didn't seem to want to know about in cold war Czechoslovakia. " He told me, over and over again, his magical stories of Tibet, for that is where he had been. And I believed everything he said, " Sís recalls. Still, after some time he too seemed to become immune, and the stories "faded to a hazy dream. " With Tibet: Through the Red Box Sís finally pays tribute to this fantastical experience, illustrating key pages from his father's diary with complex, color-rich images of mazes, mountains, and mandalas. He also produces pictures of his family at home-simple, monochromatic images that are just as haunting as their Himalayan counterparts. In one, a wistful mother and two children gather around a Christmas tree, the absent father appearing as a featureless silhouette. Tibet is a treasure for the eyes and heart. Some will ask: Is it for children or adults? Others will wonder: Is it a work of art or a storybook? One of the many things that this book makes us realize is that such classifications are entirely (and happily) unnecessary. ( Click to see a sample spread. Illustrations copyright ©1998 by Peter Sís. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. ) -Kerry Fried
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