Rose Blanch by Roberto Innocenti

       This book is powerful. I chose it because of the captivating image of a blue eyed girl on the cover surrounded by wounded soldiers. The book is about a young german girl's experience of war as it relates to the authors own childhood experience. In the book, the young girl is leading a relatively normal life until one day she decides to follow one of the trucks that regularly passes through her town. She follows the tracks of the truck until she discoveres a barbed wire fence and prisoners held behind this wire. It is then that she realized something terrible was happening and it changed how she lived her life. From then on, she would take food out to these hungry prisoners and risk her life to help them. 

         Part of the books power is that it flows from the authors own childhood experiences. Innocenti writes in the forward of the book about how he was young boy in war torn Germany and similarly did not know how bad the situation was until two German soldiers appeared on his doorstep begging his father to hide them. At the same time this was happening Innocenti witnessed a truck taking a family away, including a mother and child. It must have made a big impression on the young boy because he remembers even the color of the blanket the baby was rapped in (pink) and chose to write a book about it later on in life. 

        I loved this book because the artwork is amazing and it opened the door into a world of the past; a world that reminds me to stay awake to what is happening in our time. We live in the age of media, a world bombarded by images and visual language, which can at times be overwhelming, but it is also a medium for great change. Just as the movie Invisible Children stands as an example, stopping injustice always begins by uncovering what is hidden in darkness to those who are shrouded in ignorance. This book helps shed some light on that darkness.