Synopsis
The author recreates his father's visit to Tibet and the wondrous things that he found there.
When a boy's father, a filmmaker, goes off on an expedition, he becomes separated from his crew and gets lost for a long time. When he finally returns, he tells of his magical and enchanting experiences in Tibet, which he has recorded in a travel journal. He keeps the journal in a red box that he forbids his family from touching, and the box remains a mystery of magical proportions to the son for years until he finally reads his father's journal. As he relives the tales his father told him, the boy finds a newfound respect for these magical experiences. One of the most notable aspects of this book is its illustrations, which are enthralling, thought-provoking, and mystifying. The book will delight both children and adults. With color illustrations.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1998-11-05 | | Series: | Caldecott Honor Book |
| Size | | Height: | 12.0 in | | Width: | 11.0 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 23.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
A journey of filial discovery from an internationally acclaimed artist. Peter Sís 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 Sís, 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 Sís 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--Sís draws from his father's diary and from his own recollections of his father's incredible tales to reach a spiritual homecoming and understanding. With his sublime pictures, inspired by Tibetan Buddhist art and linking history to memory, Peter Sís gives us an extraordinary book--a work of singular artistry and rare imagination. "While my father was in China and Tibet, he kept a diary, which was later locked in a red box. We weren't allowed to touch the box. The stories I heard as a little boy faded to a hazy dream, and my drawings from that time make no sense. I cannot decipher them. It was not until I myself had gone far, far away and received the message from my father that I became interested in the red box again." -from Tibet Through the Red Box
While Peter Sis's father was in China and Tibet, he kept a diary, which was later locked in a red box. No one was allowed to touch the red box. Years later, in New York City, Peter Sis receives a letter from his father. "The Red Box is now yours", it says. Sis draws from his father's diary and from his recollections of his father's incredible tales to reach a spiritual homecoming between father and son. Full color.
Industry Reviews
"The fabulist elements seem symbolic of a Tibet that is about to be altered forever by entirely nonfabulist Communist Chinese. But Sis' more intense concern is the role that the red box always played for him: a source of wonderment and puzzlement of a lifelong curiosity about Tibet and the father who got lost there and, perhaps, out of fear and hardship, allowed his imagination free rein. So did Sis the younger, and we are beneficiaries of that, even as he whets but does not satisfy our curiosity."
New York Times - Richard Bernstein (12/02/1998)
"...a lovely fantasia on an actual boy's most magical memories, and it will please certain of us by its eccentric, uncoy passion for its subject, rigorous in the sweetest sense."
Hungry Mind Review - Kay Ryan
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 on double-page spreads brimming with pencil sketches of the events described (e.g., "The road looks like a cut into a beautiful cake"). He then magnifies the more uncanny aspects of the journal via the tales told to him by his father, recollected from childhood, which are printed on the succeeding spread. One entry describes a boy wearing bells who tracks down the filmmaker in the middle of nowhere to deliver a letter from his family; S¡s then follows with "The Jingle-Bell Boy," festooning the account with a trail of rhododendron-leaf markings that lead his father ultimately to the Dalai Lama. The guileless prose of both father and son makes S¡s's juxtaposition of the journal records with his own childhood memories all the more poignant. The luminous colors of the artwork, the panoramas of Tibetan topography and the meticulous intermingling of captivating details and the mystical aspects of Tibetan culture make this an extraordinary volume that will appeal to readers of all ages. Author tour. (Nov.)
Publishers Weekly (08/10/1998)
Gr 7 Up-Through personal memories, old tales, and intriguing pictures, S¡s opens a door to the little-known land and religion of Tibet. There is a room, a study, in a house in Prague where a red box waits to be opened. It holds a diary of a long ago journey to Tibet made by the author's filmmaker father, sent to record the building of the first road from Communist China into the high mountains of Tibet. The room appears again and again, suffused with the colors of memory. Throughout the book are small sketches and large landscapes, and handwritten diary pages on yellowed sheets with the texture of parchment. Similar in structure and art style to S¡s's The Three Golden Keys (Doubleday, 1994), this book is more solidly grounded in the reality of an adventurous journey to central Asia. Then, like a nest of boxes, it reveals layers of memory, tales of Tibet and, finally, references to the present era of political oppression and the hopes that rest on the singular figure of the Dalai Lama. Most intriguing are the eight full-page illustrations inspired by circular, symmetrical patterns and detailed symbols of the Tibetan wheel of life, creatively adapted to the text. Who will venture to study and decipher this artful book with its postmodern structure, its mysterious figures, and its interweaving of past and future? Adults will see the book as a way to introduce children to the geography, culture, and religion of Tibet. Attentive young people will be drawn to puzzle out the meaning of the stories and pictures. Art-conscious readers of all ages will appreciate the author's groundbreaking, creative use of the picture-book format in ways that challenge both eye and mind.-Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ
School Library Journal (10/01/1998)
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