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Key Information
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| Authors: |
Peter Sis |
| Nonfiction Category: |
Juvenile Nonfiction |
| Awards: |
1999 Horn Book Award |
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Professional Reviews
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Publishers Weekly: In this visually enticing, magically appealing, oversized volume, Czechoslovakian-born illustrator S!s applies his considerable gifts to painting a spellbinding portrait of his father's experiences in Tibet, where he was sent in the 1950s to instruct the Chinese in documentary filmmaking. Vladimir S!s was actually drafted by the Chinese government to record the construction of a highway from China into Tibet; he was to be gone more than two years, unable to communicate with his family. During that time, China invaded the neighboring country, and S!s senior witnessed events he dared not describe even after he returned home, except through "magical stories" he related to his son. The diary he kept during his sojourn in Tibet was locked in a red box, which his son only saw for the first time in 1994, when he received a cryptic message from his father: "The diary is now yours." Here S!s re-creates a facsimile of the diary with excerpts handwritten upon parchment-like backgrounds |
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Book Editions
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Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (November 05, 1998)
Measurements: 12"(h) x 11"(w) x 0.5"(d), 1.4 lbs.
ISBN: 9780374375522 |
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First Line
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| Publisher's Note: |
After all these years, my father is calling me home.
I have to hurry.
I am back in Prague, in our old house.
Where is everybody? |
| More Information |
| Details: |
A journey of filial discovery from an internationally acclaimed artist. Peter Sms receives a letter from his father. "The Red Box is now yours," it says. The brief note worries him and pulls him back to Prague, where the contents of the red box explain the mystery of his father's long absence during the 1950s. Czechoslovakia was behind the iron curtain; Vladimir Sms, a documentary filmmaker, was drafted into the army and sent to China. He left his wife and young son, Peter, thinking he would be home for Christmas. Two Christmases would pass before he was heard from again: Vladimir Sms was lost in Tibet. He met with the Dalai Lama; he witnessed China's invasion of Tibet. When he returned to Prague, he dared not talk to his friends about all he had seen. But he told Peter fabulous stories of his Tibetan experiences. In weaving their two stories together--of the father lost in Tibet and of the small boy in Prague, lost without his father--Sms draws from his father's diary and from his own recollections of his |
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