The Wall; Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

The Wall; Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis
2008 Caldecott Honor Book

I found this book fascinating. It is a first person narrative about growing up in Czechoslovakia and spans from the late 1940's through the 70's, and references the wall coming down in 1989. I love learning about history through a personal lens, and this book definitely provides that. I found the journal entries especially powerful.

I read it aloud to Jabu,  my 10 year old, and he both didn't much like it and had no patience at all for the journal entries (my favorite part).  I don't know if I just caught him at the wrong time,  or what,  Jabu usually really likes biographies and books based on history.

Looking at it again today, I think the problem might have been that the layout/format of this book doesn't lend itself to reading ALOUD. The story doesn't run in a straight line. And this is actually part of what makes it an interesting book. There are definitions in small print running along the edges of some pages (Cold War, Communism, Iron Curtain). The introduction gives a great overview of the historic context of the book, but for a read aloud listener is not story-like at all. There is a thread of text  about the authors own life "As long as he could remember, he had loved to draw."that is "interrupted" by captions giving historic details beside the frames of cartoon like pictures "1948. The Soviets take control of Czechoslovakia and close the borders."  And all of this is "interrupted" or (in my opinion supported) by pages of journal entries that are interspersed occasionally.

Here are a few examples from the journal entries:

"April 1956 My father's cousin Lamin is in prison as an enemy of the state. My grandmother talks to my parents about it in German so my sister and I won't understand. But we understand some of it. He was on a national volleyball team that was going to a tournament in the West, and the players were all planning to stay there. The secret police found out. Lamin is twenty years old and will be in prison for the rest of this life."

 "1961 We watch an American movie called On the Bowery at school. It shows poor people sleeping in the street. We're told this is how people in a capitalist country live."

"May 19665 Allen Ginsberg, the American beat poet, comes to Prague. Students make him our Kral Majales (King of May). Then the secret police accuse him of subversion and deport him."

The picture Peter Sims paints of life behind the Iron Curtain is not pretty. It sounds pretty scary and oppressive. I'm have my concerns about capitalism as well, but what he grew up with would not be an attractive alternative!

Anyhow, a very interesting read. Possibly a better book for ADULTS than children. But, in the Afterward I learned that the book was written in an attempt to explain his childhood to his own children.  "Now when my American family goes to visit my Czech family in the colorful city of Prague, it is hard to convince them it was ever a dark place full of fear, suspicion, and lies. I find it difficult to explain my childhood; it's hard to put it into words, and since I have always drawn everything, I have tried to draw my life---before America--- for them."