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nancy@nancykeane.com
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Kosinski,
Jerzy N.
PAINTED BIRD
New York : Grove Press, 1995.
IL AD
ISBN: 080213422X |
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boy has been sent away by his parents, sent to the countryside to escape
the worst of the war. He is six. It is eastern Europe, 1939.
The boys parents, because of their pre-war anti-Nazi activities, fear for
their lives and go into hiding. In the turmoil of war and occupation,
they lose touch with the man who placed their son in the village.
The boy is sent to his foster mother, who dies within two months.
War has disrupted the primitive conditions of the village, people who have
lived the way of their grandparents. Because of his dark eyes and
hair, his olive skin, the peasants of the village think he is a gypsy,
or a Jew "stray," although he speaks the language of the educated classes.
Alone, with no one to care for him, he survives--miraculously, against
not only the depravity of war, but also human evil and human kindness in
all its forms. As a reaction to the events he witnesses, he becomes
mute. He is lost in the age-old world of human behavior, without
a guide, without knowing what will become of him, always on the run. (Stacy
Charlesbois, Adult & Young Adult Services Librarian, charlesb@metronet.lib.mi.us,
Farmington Community Library, Farmington, Michigan) |
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SUBJECTS:
Poland -- History -- Fiction
World War, 1939-1945 -- Eastern Europe -- Fiction
Abandoned children -- Fiction
Autobiographical fiction.
War stories |
© 
Permission is granted for the
noncommercial duplication and use of this resource, provided it is substantially
unchanged from its present form and appropriate credit is given.
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