picture books for grown ups

Lately we’ve seen quite a few books that cover very difficult, complicated adult subjects presented in the form of a picture book.  The first of these to come to us was The Arrival, by Shaun Tan (2006).  This 9×12 hardcover addresses immigration from the perspective of an immigrant father who comes to the New World to start a new life and bring his young wife and child over from the Old Country.  It is largely based on images and ideas from the mass immigration from Europe during the early 1900s, with hints of modernity if not a future world.  But the message is the same whether the past, present or future: immigrating to a new country is entering an alien world with different language, civil space and even food.  This book portrays the difficulty of entering the New World through beautiful black and white drawings without the complication of text which brings home the immigrant’s isolation in a land with a foriegn language

The next picture book to come was Peter Sis’s The Wall: Growing Up Behind The Iron Curtain (2007).  This 9×12 hardcover book appears as a variety of cartoon-like images and full page art interspersed with text throughout.  The reader is instantly transported to Budapest during the 1960s seeing the world through the eyes of Sis as a teenager.  The juxtaposition of the horrors of facism and the beauty of art during beginning in free love 1960s and continuing until the triumphant fall of the wall in 1989.  This book is a pleasure. 

The last book in this description is Mendel’s Daughter: A Memoir by Martin Lemelman (2006).  I haven’t read this smaller format hardcover 7.75×11 book yet so I can only describe my anticipation of it.  The book contains drawings of Lemelman’s mother Gusta telling the story of her family’s tribulations during the Holocaust.  The art is absolutely beautiful and the wonderful pen and ink drawings are interspersed with real photos that bring the reality of this true story home.  I can’t wait to read it and I will update you soon.