Ages 5-9

This picturebook about the overthrow of a child-hating bully is a celebration of resistance, not only in its theme but also its extraordinary history. Originally performed as an opera by children between 1942 and 1944 at Terezin concentration camp, to reassure the Red Cross and other visitors, it tells a story of poor children trying to find milk for their sick mother. While the book’s provenance is grim, the delectable pictures in this edition have a folksy charm, and the concluding refrain of “The wicked never win! . . .Tyrants come along, but you just wait and see! They topple one-two-three!” has a contemporary resonance. .The text, all in capitals, has an awkwardness born of translation, but Sendak’s appetisingly bright pencil crayon and rounded lines soften harsh reality, his buildings the colours of sweets and his figures — even ghetto children wearing yellow stars — dumpy like cottage loaves. True to its origins, each scene is composed like a stage set, suggesting the aritifice of the beautified fake façade of Terezin that concealed the truth of the camp. One especially draws on all the resonances: a lullaby about a baby blackbird that flies the nest is illustrated by children flying blackbirds over their weeping mothers.

(Walker £12.99)

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