Tibet Through the Red Box - Peter Sis

The meandering, dreamy story may limit its appeal.

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Common Sense rates it
4
Read the book?
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Book details
  • Author:Peter Sis
  • # of pages: 55
  • Publisher:Farrar Straus & Giroux
  • Original Publication Date: 01/01/1998
  • Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction
  • Hardcover: $17.50
  • Publisher's Recommended Reading Level: Ages 9-12
  • Read Alone: 11+
  • Awards:Caldecott Honor, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award

Parents need to know

Parents need to know that there is nothing of concern in this gorgeous, dreamy story.

Families can talk about the author's approach to the story. He adds layers of his own experience as a child. Would you prefer a more straightforward telling of the story, or do you enjoy his blend of memory and imagination?

Message

Social Behavior:

The Chinese portray the Tibetans as savages.

Consumerism:

Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco:

Violence

The author's father is missing for a long time.

Sex

Language

Common Sense says

What's the story?

Reviewed by Amy Brotman

Lost in the Himalayas, the author's father kept an illustrated diary of his survival in Tibet. Sis mixes excerpts from this diary with his own memories and artwork to cast a peculiarly Tibetan spell, one in which past and present, fiction and nonfiction, memory and dreams are all mixed together.



Is it any good?

4

An amazing confluence of history, memory, and the magic of dreams, this sophisticated picture book is based in reality, though it shoots off in several unexpected directions. Sis adds to his father's story layer upon layer of his own experience as a child when his father was missing. He also approaches the story from a fascinating visual perspective, using some of the sketches from his father's diary and many more drawn directly from the younger Sis's imagination.

Mandalas, mythical figures, Tibetan architecture and landscape, dreamscapes, decorative patterns, and scenes from the stories are woven together to form a book as colorful, rich, and complicated as a piece of Tibetan fabric. This is a work of literary, visual, and historical art unlike anything else ever published.

What little story there is, concerning the author's father's travels through Tibet, is never really concluded. It just ends with his father reaching Potala and meeting the Dalai Lama. But this isn't meant to be a storybook--it's a book of memories and dreams, rooted in reality but not clinging to it. Though it looks like a picture book, this is really written for older readers, who may need to be encouraged to try it, since they may think it looks too young.

Other choices

For a more straightforward story about Tibet, try Rebel, or the Tintin graphic novel Tintin in Tibet. For a nonfiction look, try Tibet from the Enchantment of the World series. Also, see Bernardo Bertolucci's stunning tribute to Tibetan Buddhism, Little Buddha.

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