Madlenka

Paige Carter Madlenka By:Peter Sís

Age Range: 4 - 8 years Paperback: 48 pages Publisher: Square Fish; Reprint edition (October 12, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0312659121 ISBN-13: 978-0312659127
 * Bibliographic Information: **

In 1982 he was sent by the Czech government to Los Angeles to produce a film for the 1984 Winter Olympics. However, the film project was canceled when Czechoslovakia and the entire Eastern bloc decided to boycott the Olympics. Ordered by his government to return home, Peter instead decided to stay in the United States, and was granted asylum. A correspondence with Maurice Sendak led to a meeting, and Peter's introduction to children's book editors, and he moved to New York City in 1984 to begin a new career. Sís quickly became one of the leading artists in the field with the publication of the 1986 Newbery Medal Winner, //The Whipping Boy// by Sid Fleishman. With more than twenty books to his credit and almost as many honors, Peter is a six-time winner of //The New York Times Book Review// Best Illustrated Book of the Year for //Rainbow Rhino//, //Beach Ball//, //Follow the Dream//, //Komodo!//, //The Three Golden Keys,// and //The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin//. //Komodo!// and //A Small Tall Tale from the Far Far North// were each named a //Boston Globe-Horn Book// Award Honor Book, and he has won a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal for //Komodo!// and a Silver Medal for //The Three Golden Keys//. Peter's book //Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei// was a 1997 Caldecott Honor Book and has been published in English, French, German, Czech, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. //Madlenka, Madlenka's Dog//, and //The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin// were all named //New York Times Book Review// Notable Children's Books of the Year. In 2003, Peter was named a MacArthur Fellow, an honor bestowed by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recognizing “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” In addition to his prolific career as an author, Peter Sís has contributed more than a thousand drawings to //The New York Times Book Review// and his illustrations have appeared in //Time// magazine, //The// //Atlantic Monthly//, //Newsweek//, //Esquire// and many other magazines in the United States and abroad. He has designed many book jackets and posters, including, in 1984, the famous poster for Milos Forman's Academy Award-winning motion picture //Amadeus//. More recently, he has completed a mural for the Washington/Baltimore Airport, a poster for the New York City subway system, and a stage set for the Joffrey Ballet. He lends his art to many mediums and will sometimes paint on any surface he can find -- chairs, walls, eggs, boxes, seashells, even hats. Peter recently created a mural for New York City's 86th Street Lexington Avenue subway station, working with the city's Metropolitan Transit Authority. His work has been exhibited in Prague, London, Zurich, Hamburg, Los Angeles, and New York in both group and one-man shows. Most recently, in 2007, Peter published //The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain// (Frances Foster Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux / September 2007). Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, says of the work, “Peter Sís’s book is most of all about the will to live one’s life in freedom and should be required reading for all those who take their freedom for granted.” In January 2008, the book was awarded The Robert F. Sibert Medal and was also named a Caldecott Honor Book. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Peter Sís lives in the New York City area with his wife and children.
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Author Biography: **
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Peter Sís **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> is an internationally acclaimed illustrator, author, and filmmaker. He was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1949, and attended the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and the Royal College of Art in London. He began his career as a filmmaker and won the Golden Bear Award at the 1980 West Berlin Film Festival for an animated short. He has also won the Grand Prix Toronto and the Cine Golden Eagle Award, and in 1983 collaborated with Bob Dylan on //You Got to Serve Somebody//. His film work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">This book is about a girl names Madlenka, who realizes her tooth is loose, and wants to tell everyone. She first goes to tell her friend, Mr. Gaston the French baker, that her tooth is loose and that she is a big girl now. The book then tells what the baker bakes. He tells her about Paris and France. The book follows her to all the people she goes to visit to tell about her tooth: her Indian friend, the Italian gelato bus driver, etc. After she tells her friends about her tooth, they share information with her about their country. Madlenka is having a great day sharing her news and learning all of her friend’s stories. When she sees her friends from different places, they greet her in their native language. She learns many things from her friends about where they are from. When she finally gets home, she is late and her parents ask her where she has been, and she says, “All around the world.”
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Summary: **

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The theme of this book was excellent, as it included a variety of cultures. It also included some good key facts about those cultures. It incorporated different languages, which is always good to introduce to children at a young age. I would use this book in a social studies lesson. I could use this to teach children about different cultures, and how people from other cultures can be friends and share information about their cultures with one another. I could plan a lesson having children share information about their culture, and after all the students had shared, it would be as if they had gone all around the world like Madlenka. I could also use it in a lesson about language, teaching children greetings from all over the world.
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<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">I really enjoyed this book. It is a great way to introduce culture into the early childhood classroom. The illustrations and the way the author placed the words on the pages are very intriguing. It is very different from most children books I have seen. The pages flow every nicely from one another by having cut outs that let you see part of the next page. It is a great story filled with a lot of factual information. I would use this in my classroom for a variety of lessons, and just to read as an enjoyable story.
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Book Review: **

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