The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

One of the requirements for my undergraduate education students in my upcoming Children's Literature course is to read ten picture books suitable for older readers. While I was meeting with the professor who typically teaches the course to plan for next trimester, I noticed the book The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís on her desk. It caught my attention because of remembering Peter Sís as the illustrator for Pam Muñoz Ryan's The Dreamer. I borrowed the book to read over the weekend and ended up loving the possibilities.

The book has a unique format. I was only a couple of pages in when I realized that I couldn't read the book as I am accustomed to - reading all of the words on one page before moving on to the next. It was breaking up the story line too much.

Instead, I realized that there were different levels of complexity. I ended up reading through with just the brief words, phrases, and sentences on the bottoms of the pages, seeing that it was one way to read the book. Then there was the other layers, where a reader could go back and re-read for the other details and descriptions available on the page.

I love that for younger students solely reading the bottoms of the pages is enough to tell a story, while older readers can dig deeper, especially with the overview from a first read of the one layer. The book has a fun range of layouts. While most pages are similar, there are other pages that have a big two-page spread picture with words scattered across the pages labeling certain components. Other two-page spreads have journal entries from the time frame.

This book lends itself well to many teaching points, including:

• Multi-genre texts
• Reaching multiple age ranges
• Different ways to tell a story
• Allowing for multiple readings to understand different layers of text
• Historical contexts