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4.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing ever works out neatly..., Feb 7 2004
A book sorely in need of annotation. Retold by Tony Award winning playwrite Tony Kushner and illustrated with grace and aplomb by Maurice Sendak (the thinking kid's illustrator), the tale of "Brundibar" is retold in an entirely new format. Originally an opera performed by the children of Terezin (a Nazi concentration camp) for those Germans who had to be convinced that everything was just ducky in the camps. The children were, needless to say, killed after the final performance of this piece, and so the opera is as light-hearted as it is chilling. In the plot, two children attempt to find fresh milk for their ailing mother. Only milk will do. But they are chased away by the nasty Hitler look-alike, Brundibar, and must gather their forces (some 300 children or so) to face up to the bully.Sendak and Kushner have created a story that fulfills several needs. It tells a story that has links to horrors unimaginable. At the same time, they have created a whole new text that deserves examination. That and it's darned purty. The pictures in this book are amazing, filled with tiny details that make a person think. When the brother and sister gather 300 children with them for aid, a Kilroy character holds a sign saying, "People are happy helping. It's never hard to find help. It is only hard to know that it's time to ask". The fact that Kilroy is best associated with the American GI forces in WWII may or may not be important to the scene. At any rate, it sparks dialogue. The book is Sendakian in the extreme due to the odd combination of realism and outright peculiarity. The ice-cream seller is going to give me nightmares for months, I'm sure. I don't think this is necessarily a book for children. And there is nothing wrong with that. Why can't we have a couple picture books in this world that are NOT for children? We have animated films for adults. And video games for adults. Why not picture books that tackle history and art in one fell swoop? That isn't to say that this book is inappropriate for children. It isn't. They may, in fact, be enchanted by the tale. But in the event that they are not, it comes as little surprise. Kids aren't going to grasp the eloquent scene of children flying on blackbirds away from their sobbing mothers. Or the black smoke that billows from the oven conjured up by the children's singing. A problem with the book comes with the lack of further information about the story's origins. The story never directly says anything about Terezin, and the brief bookflaps only mention the incident in passing. Facts (that the children of Terezin died after the show, for example) are not gone into with any depth. An author's afterword, or perhaps some sort of note explaining what inspired this story, would be greatly appreciated. Similarly, the illustrations are filled with little details that would yield a lot of pleasure for readers if they understood their significance. When the children are banned to the alleyway and sit under newspapers, what do the newspapers say? What is "skola" as written on the fence in one scene? Is it significant that the milkman is from Mekos Dairy? "Brundibar" isn't a perfect creation. But it's a necessary one. Even if you don't understand it completely, you should at least try.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow., Dec 20 2003
I think I'm qualified to say whether a book has real quality as a book for kids--this one does. The story is lovely, a straight-forward folktale/teaching story on the importance of working together to overcome adversity. The language glitters and charms, as anyone who has seen Tony Kushner's plays would expect. And Maurice Sendak's illustrations are his most lucid, enchanting and charming since In The Night Kitchen. My five-year-old loved it, loves the story of two enterprising children defeating an adult bully, and has asked to have it read for the past few nights, since we got the book.
The backstory of the book--the fact that it is based on an opera written by the children of Teresienstadt concentration camp--is hinted at very subtly. If one is aware enough to pick up the clues (ranging from a gateway that reads "Arbeit Macht Frei," like the entrance to Auschwitz, to the yellow stars marking Jewish characters, to the barely legible program from the premiere of the opera, behind a handwritten note), the story is there. I found it gave the story a depth and resonance that stayed with me. If, on the other hand, you don't know about it--I certainly wasn't going to point it out to my kids, just yet--the book still works beautifully.
All in all, this is a beautiful work from two of the most remarkable artists who have been active in American popular culture in the last fifty years.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Pretentious adults take note. Children beware!, Dec 3 2003
By A Customer
An excellent book for the same pretentious, self-congratulatory grown-ups who give themselves little kisses of self regard for their Channel 13 memberships and who shiver with uncontrollable pleasure at the very mention of "culture," or "art." Children, however, will be, as mine was, and I was, bored. My child is too young to also have been repelled by Tony Kushner's fake, artsy-fartsy poeticisms that make reading the book out loud a tedius struggle, though he was not too young to have wondered, as I did, if an actual STORY was going to begin at some point. A good reliable general rule of thumb, especially where children's books are concerned, is that when critics fling about raves involving high school lit terms like "allegory" the cautious reader without a lot of loose pocket change will walk on by. THE WILD THINGS, for eg, is a great book that hasn't got much of a story story, but that has a LOGIC and a story type rythym and language that doesn't try to force the ball out of the park.
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