Anna and the Swallow Man

Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit is one of the more quiet WW II books I have read, but it is also one of the most beautiful. Anna Lania is seven years old at the beginning of this story. She lives in Krakow, Poland with her father. He is a professor of linguistics at the university, and so he and Anna speak several different languages.

Anna thought that each of the languages her father spoke had been tailored, like a bespoke suit of clothes, to the individual person with whom he conversed. French was not French; it was Monsieur Bouchard. Yiddish was not Yiddish; it was Reb Shmulik. Every word and phrase of Armenian that Anna had ever heard reminded her of the face of the little old tatik who always greeted her and her father with small cups of strong, bitter coffee.

Every word of Armenian smelled like coffee.

One day in November of 1939, Anna’s father does not return home from work. Unbeknownst to Anna, he has been taken by the Germans. She has been spending the day at Herr Doktor Fuchsmann’s shop. After several days, the formerly friendly shop-owner doesn’t want to take care of her anymore. So it is outside of his shop that she meets the Swallow Man. Rather, she sees him first:

The man was tall and exceedingly thin. His suit, brown wool and in three pieces, must’ve been made specifically for him…He carried an old physician’s bag, the brown leather worn a bit lighter than the color of his dark suit. It had brass fittings, and on the side of the bag was the monogram SWG in a faded red that must’ve originally been the color of his dark necktie. A tall black umbrella rode between the two handles of the bag, stacked on its top, despite the clearness of the sky.

Anna and the Swallow Man share an affinity for speaking languages—for changing into different people as they change their native tongue. They form a small team, and together, crossing the Polish countryside during the throes of World War II. Who can be trusted? As the reader meets each character he or she is filled with either a sense of delight and love, or pure terror and dread. Who is the Swallow Man? He tells Anna: “to be found is to be gone forever.” One can only stay hidden for so long.

Gavriel Savit proves he is a master of words. Words, and language, play a large role in Anna’s story. This book asks the big questions from a child’s eye-view: what is war and what is death? It also asks the most inner question of the self: how do we know who we are? Does our language determine that?

Anna and the Swallow Man is a beautiful story that soars with gravity and magical-realism. As the snow falls, it will be easy to imagine Anna walking in the shadow of the Swallow Man in the snowy Polish countryside, 1939. This book is a young adult novel that teens and adults alike will enjoy.

Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear

This beautiful picture book, illustrated by Sophie Blackall and written by Lindsay Mattick, tells the miraculous journey of a man and his bear that crossed the Atlantic from Canada to England; and this is the very bear that would become the inspiration for Winnie-the-Poohwhen A.A. Milne and his son visited the London Zoo.

On August 24, 1914, Captain Harry Colebourn bought a baby bear for $20 on a train station platform.

“Harry stopped. It’s not every day that you see a bear cub at a train station. 'That Bear has lost its mother,' he thought, 'and that man must be the trapper who got her.'”

On his way overseas to fight in World War I, Colebourn, a veterinarian from Winnipeg, decided to name the bear Winnie after his hometown.

When Colebourn showed Winnie to the Colonel, he was originally met with disapproval.

“Captain Colebourn!” said the Colonel on the train, as the little Bear sniffed at his knees. “We are on a journey of a thousand miles, heading into the thick of battle, and you propose to bring this Most Dangerous Creature?” Bear stood straight up on her hind legs as if to salute the Colonel. The Colonel stopped speaking at once—and then, in quite a different voice, he said, 'Oh, hallo.'”

Soon, Winnie was one of their own.

Finding Winnie is narrated by Lindsay Mattick, the great-grandaughter of Harry Colebourn, as a family story passed down from generation to generation. When Lindsay's son asks her for a story, she asks, “What kind of story?” to which the reply is;“You know. A true story. One about a Bear.”

After crossing the Atlantic with Winnie, Harry knew that she was growing larger and could not be taken into battle, so he took her to the London Zoo.

“Winnie’s head bowed. Harry’s hands were warm as sunshine, as usual. 'There is something you must always remember,” Harry said. 'It’s the most important thing, really. Even if we’re apart, I’ll always love you. You’ll always be my Bear.'”

Interior spread from Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear

Harry and Winnie's parting seem's like the end of the story, but as Lindsay points out, “Sometimes, you have to let one story begin so the next one can begin.”

The beautiful and heartfelt illustrations by Sophie Blackall bring this story to life in ink and watercolor. Her illustrations depict Harry Colebourn’s excitement of finding the bear, the heartache of leaving Winnie behind in the zoo, and the joy of a new friendship with Christopher Robin.

To find out more about Sophie Blackall's fascinating illustration process in Finding Winnie, visit her blog!

Finding Winnie, will bring you and your child joy and delight at discovering the true story behind one of the most famous characters in literature, and show that sometimes, one story's ending is just another story's beginning.

Captain Colebourn and Winnie

Three Tales in One

Pam Muñoz Ryan
Photo: Ryan Publicity

Pam Muñoz Ryan's epic novel Echo began as a way to write about a little-known court case, Roberto Alvarez v. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District. Her research led her to a school yearbook photo in which half the students were barefoot and each kid was holding a Hohner Marine Band harmonica. 

That discovery took her on a journey involving three children's stories, all with a Hohner Marine Band harmonica at the center: 12-year-old Friedrich Schmidt in 1933 Germany, as the Nazi Party gains momentum; orphaned 11-year-old Mike Flannery in 1935 Philadelphia during the Depression; and Ivy Maria Lopez living in Southern California in 1942 as World War II rages. I got to interview Ryan for School Library Journal's Curriculum Connections. Here are a few highlights.

One of my favorite lines in Friedrich’s story is when he anticipates his audition for the conservatory: “How could he want something and fear it so much at the same time?”

Friedrich’s story is so much about the disillusionment of dreams. In his mind, he thought that he could have maybe gone to the conservatory, but he would still have stayed there in his town. His biggest worry was the audition, but there’s something larger [Hitler] that jeopardizes his entire existence.

In Mike’s story, [the adoptive mother] is the one who’s completely disillusioned  about the circumstances of her life—there’s another subtle theme about women being repressed. A lot of societal issues [were addressed in the book], and I had to present them matter-of-factly.

There’s the wonderful quote in Mike’s story as the boy goes through the music store that seems to reverberate with the harmonica’s journey: “Isn’t it wonderful! Music is just waiting to escape from all these instruments.”

There was the idea, as far back as my book The Dreamer (Scholastic, 2010) about Pablo Neruda. His premise was that your tangible essence travels with your tools, with anything that you’ve used with your hands. I love the idea that the harmonica carried something positive and self-affirming with it from [person to person]…that sense of euphoric well-being. It sounded so beautiful. I wanted that idea to carry that through the book.

Tell us about the fairy tale as a frame for the three stories.

From the moment they learn about Otto, the three sisters, and the witch’s curse, I wanted readers to suspend disbelief. By couching the three stories within a traditional fairy tale, I was saying to readers, “Come with me and believe…there’s some scary, hard stuff coming. The book is a dark forest, but we’ll make it to the end….”

Opening Doors

Peter Sís
Photo: Palma Fiocco

 The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is Peter Sís' favorite book. "When I got it from my father, he made a point that it's a special book," Sís told me when I got to interview him for Kirkus Reviews about his book The Pilot and the Little Prince. "It was about secrets." At the time, Sís was a child growing up in Prague under a totalitarian regime, and The Little Prince transported him outside of its walls. "This was a door through which I could go myself," he says. "I could go to another place or another planet."

The Pilot and the Little Prince took Sís a long time to write. "The Galileo (Starry Messenger) and Darwin (The Tree of Life) books happened while this project percolated," says Sís. "With Darwin and Galileo, I wanted to show children that people would be against them, and they'd have to face challenges." On the other hand, Sís says, "Saint-Exupéry is about the poetry." But it's also a history of the airplane. Born in 1900, Saint-Exupéry started flying at the dawn of aviation and, as a pilot, saw dramatic changes in the development of the airplane. The Lockheed P-38 Lightning Antoine flies at the end of the book is almost as advanced as the planes today, according to Sís. He simultaneously captures both the possibilities of science and the poetry of the era in which the author/artist and aviator lived. This duality resonated with Sís, who grew up reading Jules Verne and watching the films of Georges Méliès, among other artists, to whom he gives a nod in the opening spread.

Sís has returned to The Little Prince at different stages in his life. "As a child, I thought, 'Of course, he talks about how we children know it's an elephant in a boa constrictor.' " These are the secrets Saint-Exupéry confides—that children understand what adults do not. “I remember coming to this country, it was a book of hope," Sís continues. "Reading it to my children later, it was more melancholy and sad. Being older, you understand both worlds. Unfortunately, I became the adult."

This is an excerpt from a feature that originally appeared in Kirkus Reviews.