Elise was frightenedof spiders, people, even trees. So she never went out, night or day. One day a strange thing flies in through the window and lands at her feet. And then there comes a knock at the door. Elise has a visitor who will change everything. The Visitor is a story about friendship and shyness that plays out in a mini theatre, as a child unwittingly brings light and colorliterallyinto a lonely person’s life. The unique artwork has a doll’s house appeal. Damm creates a diorama from cardboard and photographs the scenes, giving the illustrations a special luminosity and depth.
Germany
Materials from Germany
Under the Same Sky
Endearing animal artwork and lyrical text combine in a peek-through picture book celebration of emotions that describes how everyone lives under the same sky and shares many of the same hopes and dreams.
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies
Newbery-Honor winning author Joyce Sidman explores the extraordinary life and scientific discoveries of Maria Merian, who discovered the truth about metamorphosis and documented the science behind the mystery in this visual biography that features many original paintings by Maria herself.
Robert F. Sibert Medal Winner
The Faithful Spy
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party is gaining strength and becoming more menacing every day. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor upset by the complacency of the German church toward the suffering around it, forms a breakaway church to speak out against the established political and religious authorities. When the Nazis outlaw the church, he escapes as a fugitive. Struggling to reconcile his faith and the teachings of the Bible with the Nazi Party’s evil agenda, Bonhoeffer decides that Hitler must be stopped by any means possible!
Good Night Sleep Tight
Fox and Rabbit live quite far away, in a bright little house beyond the mole hills. When they wish each other a good night, the rustling pear tree, the raspberries, and the stars join in. If they can’t sleep, they count the good nights (335 in total). Or they try sleeping somewhere else in the trees or in a tent. Sometimes they swing on the lamp shades.
I Need All Of It
In Petra Postert and Jens Rassmus’s illustrated I Need All of It, a little boy recounts to his father the tales of how he received the three objects in his pocket and why he needs to keep them.
To Look A Nazi In The Eye
The true story of nineteen-year-old Jordana Lebowitz’s time at the trial of Oskar Groening, known as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz, a man charged with being complicit in the death of more than 300,000 Jews. A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Jordana attended the trail. She realized that by witnessing history she gained the knowledge and legitimacy to be able to stand in the footsteps of the survivors.
The Girl With The Red Balloon
When sixteen-year-old Ellie Baum accidentally time-travels via red balloon to 1988 East Berlin, she’s caught up in a conspiracy of history and magic. She meets members of an underground guild in East Berlin who use balloons and magic to help people escape over the Wall but even to the balloon makers, Ellie’s time travel is a mystery. When it becomes clear that someone is using dark magic to change history, Ellie must risk everything including her only way home to stop the process.
The Forgotten Book
A new boy in school, the arrogant, aloof, and irritatingly handsome Darcy de Winter, becomes Emma’s unlikely ally as secrets are revealed and danger creeps ever closer.
What the Night Sings
Liberated from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945, sixteen-year-old Gerta tries to make a new life for herself, aided by Lev, a fellow survivor, and Michah, who helps Jews reach Palestine.