From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 08:08:22 -0600

No Pretty Pictures is one of at least three especially fine Holocaust memoirs to come out this year, along with Thanks To My Mother and Edith Baer's Walk the Dark Streets. No Pretty Pictures is distiinguished for its voice, sticking the matter-of?ct voice and perspective of a very young girl throughout. It is also a beautifully made book, clearly another book that has been a labor of love for the writer, editor, and publisher (Greenwillow). Though the narrative sticks to the young child's perspective throughout, I have to admit I also like the adult perspective that frames the story in the prologue and epilogue, because it is here that Anita Lobel takes measure of her experience, saying," Only when I was much older did the horrors and terrible losses of fully conscious people during all those years of terror dawn on me....I mourn for all those who were grown, thinking people and who were truly capable of knowing and feeling that which was torn from them." And she says, "I have spent many, many more years living well, occupied with doing happy and interesting things, than I spent ducking the Nazis or being a refugee." Hers is a beautifully written memoir; we can learn form her experience and from her reflectiveness as an adult pondering the meaning of that experience.


Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, TN 37205
Received on Fri 02 Apr 1999 08:08:22 AM CST