Anita Lobel's Gripping Memoir example essay topic

'Nominated for a 1998 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War is Anita Lobel's gripping memoir of surviving the Holocaust. A Caldecott-winning illustrator of such delightful picture books as On Market Street, it is difficult to believe Lobel endured the horrific childhood she did. From age 5 to age 10, Lobel spent what are supposed to be carefree years hiding from the Nazis, protecting her younger brother, being captured and marched from camp to camp, and surviving completely dehumanizing conditions. A terrifying story by any measure, Lobel's memoir is all the more haunting as told from the first-person, child's-eye view. Her girlhood voice tells it like it is, without irony or even complete understanding, but with matter-of-fact honesty and astonishing attention to detail. She carves vivid, enduring images into readers' minds.

On hiding in the attic of the ghetto: 'We were always told to be very quiet. The whispers of the trapped grown-ups sounded like the noise of insects rubbing their legs together. ' On being discovered while hiding in a convent: 'They lined us up facing the wall. I looked at the dark red bricks in front of me and waited for the shots.

When the shouting continued and the shots didn't come, I noticed my breath hanging in thin puffs in the air. ' On trying not to draw the attention of the Nazis: 'I wanted to shrink away. To fold into a small invisible thing that had no detectable smell. No breath. No flesh. No sound.

' It is a miracle that Lobel and her brother survived on their own in this world that any adult would find unbearable. Indeed, and appropriately, there are no pretty pictures here, and adults choosing to share this story with younger readers should make themselves readily available for explanations and comforting words. (The camps are full of excrement and death, all faithfully recorded in direct, unsparing language.) But this is a story that must be told, from the shocking beginning when a young girl watches the Nazis march into Krakow, to the final words of Lobel's epilogue: 'My life has been good. I want more.

' (Ages 10 to 16) -- Brangien Davis From Booklist Gr. 6^-12. The truth of the child's viewpoint is the strength of this Holocaust survivor story, told with physical immediacy and no 'pride of victim hood. ' Lobel's ebullient, gorgeously colored illustrated books -- from the Caldecott Honor Book On Market Street (1982) to Toads and Diamonds (1996) -- give no hint of her dark, terrifying childhood. Barely five years old when the Nazis came to her comfortable home in Poland, she spent the next five years in hiding and on the run; then she was captured and transported to concentration camps. Through the marches, hunger, mud, stench, and corpses, her younger brother was nearly always with her, disguised as a girl to hide his circumcision.

Matter-of-fact ly, she tells how she protected him ('Once I found a raw potato in the mud. My brother and I took turns taking bites out of it'); in the Ravens bruck selections, she dragged him to the left, away from the chimneys. With the same quiet truth, she describes her childhood shame at being an 'ugly, obvious Jew girl,' a stigma she still felt in the two years she spent recovering from tuberculosis, nursed by kind caregivers in a Swedish sanatorium after the war. Looking back, she avoids sermonizing and analysis. There's a visceral physical ness to her memories of the terror ('the whispers of the trapped grown-ups sounded like the noise of insects rubbing their legs together') and in the elemental's she celebrated when she was safe: the luxury of privacy, of hair, no lice, a flushing toilet, sheets white and clean, and the flat, slithering, sweet taste of butter. She always felt distant from her cold parents; it's the loss of Nian ia, the nanny who raised and sheltered her, that still breaks her heart.

Older readers who remember her picture books will be stirred by her story of starting school at age 12 for the first time, the only dark kid with all the blonde Swedes, clumsy at gym and sports, an outsider, until she discovered she could draw. Hazel Roch man From Kirkus Reviews A haunting look back by Lobel, a Polish Jew who 'was born far, far away, on a bloody continent at a terrible time. ' ' Lobel writes of her life as a young girl, who 'was barely five years old when the war began. ' 's he and her three-year-old brother did not understand when her father disappeared in 1939 (to Russia, she later learned), but very soon they understood the words 'transported, deported, concentration camp and liquidation. ' ' Taken from a Benedictine convent that sheltered Jewish children, Lobel and her brother (by then, ten and eight) were first in Montel upi Prison, then in Ravens bro ck, where they were sick with lice, diarrhea, and tuberculosis. They were rescued and sent to Sweden to regain their health and eventually to be united with their parents. This is an inexpressibly sad book about a young girl who missed her childhood, yet survived to say that her life 'has been good.

I want more. ' ' (b&w photos, not seen) (Memoir. 10-14) -- Copyright (c) 1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. About the Author Anita Lobel was born in Cracow, Poland, just before the beginning of World War II. In the proper Jewish household of her childhood there were several servants. One of them was Anita's beloved nanny, who had taken care of Anita and her younger brother since their birth.

Throughout the war, this strong-willed Catholic countrywoman guarded Anita and her brother, passing them off as her own children. For five years they were moved from town to village until they were discovered hiding in a convent and taken to a concentration camp. Somehow they survived until liberation and were brought to Sweden. Eventually Anita's parents were located, and the family was reunited in Stockholm. There Anita went to high school and began taking art lessons. When the family emigrated to New York, Anita won a scholarship to Pratt Institute.

In New York she met and married Arnold Lobel. She became a textile designer, working at home while their two children were growing up. One Christmas she gave Susan Hirsch man, then Arnold Lobel's editor, three small scarves that she had made from some of the intricate flowery prints that she specialized in, Susan suggested she do a picture book, and the result was Sven's Bridge. The book was published in 1965 and made the New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year list that fall.

(It was redesigned in full color and reissued by Green willow in 1992.) Anita soon discovered that she could combine the exuberance of her decorative fabric designs with the narrative form of picture books. There have been many books over the years, including pictures for texts by various writers; collaborations with Arnold, such as On Market Street and The Rose in My Garden; and her own adaptations from Scandinavian folk stories (King Rooster, Queen Hen; The Pancake; The Straw Maid). Some of Anita's most challenging favorites have been Princess Fur ball and Toads and Diamonds by Charlotte Huck; This Quiet Lady by Charlotte Zolo tow; and The Cat and the Cook retold by Ethel Heins; as well as her own alphabet books Alison's Zinnia and Away from Home-and The Dwarf Giant, the art for which was inspired by Japanese theater. Her most recent work is her memoir of her childhood in war-torn Poland called No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War. Anita's interests in theater and music and foreign languages have served her well in her work both as an author and an illustrator. She has also designed clothes, embroidered tapestries, and designed stained glass windows.

She has been an actress and a singer. 'It is the 'drama' in a picture-book text that interests me the most,' she has said. 'I 'stage' the story the way a director might work on a theater piece. Even though I have been involved with picture books for many years, with each new text, whether or not I have written it, I am always looking for a new 'vision.

' And in the past few years full-color printing techniques have been so improved that I have had a chance to rediscover the way I wanted to paint pictures when I was a young student in art school. ' 'amazon. com'.