As a child in 1950s Czechoslovakia, Caldecott Honor-winning artist Peter Sís would listen to mysterious tales of Tibet, "the roof of the world." The narrator, oddly enough, was his father--a documentary filmmaker who had been separated from his crew, caught in a blizzard, and (according to him, anyway) nursed back to health by gentle Yetis. Young Sís learned of a beautiful land of miracles and monks beset by a hostile China; of the 14th Dalai Lama, a "Boy-God-King"; and of "a magic palace with a thousand rooms--a room for every emotion and heart's desire." Hearing these accounts--some extravagant but all moving--helped the boy recover from an accident. The stories also allowed Sís's father to relate an odyssey other adults didn't seem to want to know about in cold war Czechoslovakia. "He told me, over and over again, his magical stories of Tibet, for that is where he had been. And I believed everything he said," Sís recalls. Still, after some time he too seemed to become immune, and the stories "faded to a hazy dream." With Tibet: Through the Red Box Sís finally pays tribute to this fantastical experience, illustrating key pages from his father's diary with complex, color-rich images of mazes, mountains, and mandalas. He also produces pictures of his family at home--simple, monochromatic images that are just as haunting as their Himalayan counterparts. In one, a wistful mother and two children gather around a Christmas tree, the absent father appearing as a featureless silhouette. Tibet is a treasure for the eyes and heart. Some will ask: Is it for children or adults? Others will wonder: Is it a work of art or a storybook? One of the many things that this book makes us realize is that such classifications are entirely (and happily) unnecessary. (Click to see a sample spread. Illustrations copyright ©1998 by Peter Sís. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.)


From Publishers Weekly
In this visually enticing, magically appealing, oversized volume, Czechoslovakian-born illustrator Sis applies his considerable gifts to painting a spellbinding portrait of his father's experiences in Tibet, where he was sent in the 1950s to instruct the Chinese in documentary filmmaking. Vladimir Sis was actually drafted by the Chinese government to record the construction of a highway from China into Tibet; he was to be gone more than two years, unable to communicate with his family. During that time, China invaded the neighboring country, and Sis senior witnessed events he dared not describe even after he returned home, except through "magical stories" he related to his son. The diary he kept during his sojourn in Tibet was locked in a red box, which his son only saw for the first time in 1994, when he received a cryptic message from his father: "The diary is now yours." Here Sis re-creates a facsimile of the diary with excerpts handwritten upon parchment-like backgrounds on double-page spreads brimming with pencil sketches of the events described (e.g., "The road looks like a cut into a beautiful cake"). He then magnifies the more uncanny aspects of the journal via the tales told to him by his father, recollected from childhood, which are printed on the succeeding spread. One entry describes a boy wearing bells who tracks down the filmmaker in the middle of nowhere to deliver a letter from his family; Sis then follows with "The Jingle-Bell Boy," festooning the account with a trail of rhododendron-leaf markings that lead his father ultimately to the Dalai Lama. The guileless prose of both father and son makes Sis's juxtaposition of the journal records with his own childhood memories all the more poignant. The luminous colors of the artwork, the panoramas of Tibetan topography and the meticulous intermingling of captivating details and the mystical aspects of Tibetan culture make this an extraordinary volume that will appeal to readers of all ages. Author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-Through personal memories, old tales, and intriguing pictures, Sis opens a door to the little-known land and religion of Tibet. There is a room, a study, in a house in Prague where a red box waits to be opened. It holds a diary of a long ago journey to Tibet made by the author's filmmaker father, sent to record the building of the first road from Communist China into the high mountains of Tibet. The room appears again and again, suffused with the colors of memory. Throughout the book are small sketches and large landscapes, and handwritten diary pages on yellowed sheets with the texture of parchment. Similar in structure and art style to Sis's The Three Golden Keys (Doubleday, 1994), this book is more solidly grounded in the reality of an adventurous journey to central Asia. Then, like a nest of boxes, it reveals layers of memory, tales of Tibet and, finally, references to the present era of political oppression and the hopes that rest on the singular figure of the Dalai Lama. Most intriguing are the eight full-page illustrations inspired by circular, symmetrical patterns and detailed symbols of the Tibetan wheel of life, creatively adapted to the text. Who will venture to study and decipher this artful book with its postmodern structure, its mysterious figures, and its interweaving of past and future? Adults will see the book as a way to introduce children to the geography, culture, and religion of Tibet. Attentive young people will be drawn to puzzle out the meaning of the stories and pictures. Art-conscious readers of all ages will appreciate the author's groundbreaking, creative use of the picture-book format in ways that challenge both eye and mind.Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The noted illustrator/storyteller recounts his father's two years trapped in Tibet.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times, Richard Bernstein
These arresting and luscious drawings so dominate the book that you almost fail to notice the text that they accompany, but there is a text, almost an incantation, whose motif is a child's wide-eyed rumination on the magical and strange stories of his father.... a charming book and a visually beautiful one...


From Booklist
Sis is best known as the illustrator of such notable children's books as Starry Messenger (1996), a Caldecott Honor Book. This book, too, has much that will appeal to the young reader, but its mix of biography, magic realism, and intricate artwork exudes a sophistication that takes it beyond the borders of Sis' usual audience. When Sis opens the red lacquered box that has sat on his father's table for decades, he finds the diary his father kept when he was lost in Tibet in the mid-1950s. The text replicates the diary's spidery handwriting, while the illustrations depict elaborate mazes and mandalas, along with dreamlike spreads that are filled with fragmented details of the father's and son's lives. As the story of the elder Sis' journey into the heart of Tibet unfolds, with its magical messengers, Yeti and a Boy-God-King, Sis begins to come to terms with what the loss of his father for that time meant to him, then and always. This is not a book that's easy to describe. Each element folds into the other and blends, then changing shape, like a kaleidoscope. Impeccably designed and beautifully made, the book has a dreamlike quality that will keep readers of many ages coming back to find more in its pages. Ilene Cooper


From Kirkus Reviews
A grown man reads through a diary of his fathers travels in China and Tibet, written long ago and kept locked away for many years in a red box. Ss grew up in Prague in the 1950s, where his father Vladimir worked as a filmmaker. Ordered by the Communist authorities to make a documentary of a road construction in China, Vladimir becomes separated from his film crew and lost in Tibet. His diary describes his wanderings in that strange and magical place: to find his way home, Vladimir hikes through endless mountain ranges, is given shelter by Buddhist monks, and eventually meets the Dalai Lama himself. Beautiful illustrations of Tibetan-style art, illuminated reproductions of Vladimirs diary, and richly colored landscapes, all by the author, combine with the haunting story of a young boys longing for his absent father to create an enchanting and delightful piece of work. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"When Sis opens the red lacquered box that has sat on his father's dresser for decades he finds the diary his father kept when he was lost in Tibet in the mid 1950s...As the story of the elder S°s's journey into the heart of Tibet unfolds...S°s begins to come to terms with what the loss of his father for that time meant to him, then and always." --Booklist

"Extraordinary." --Starred, Publishers Weekly



Review
"When Sis opens the red lacquered box that has sat on his father's dresser for decades he finds the diary his father kept when he was lost in Tibet in the mid 1950s...As the story of the elder S°s's journey into the heart of Tibet unfolds...S°s begins to come to terms with what the loss of his father for that time meant to him, then and always." --Booklist

"Extraordinary." --Starred, Publishers Weekly



Book Description
A father's diary, an artist's memoir.

By the author of the best-selling Three Golden Keys.

While my father was in China and Tibet, he kept a diary, which was later locked in a red box. We weren't allowed to touch the box. The stories I heard as a little boy faded to a hazy dream, and my drawings from that time make no sense. I cannot decipher them. It was not until I myself had gone far, far away and received the message from my father that I became interested in the red box again . . .

In New York, Peter Ss receives a letter from his father. "The Red Box is now yours," it says. The brief note worries him and pulls him back to Prague, where the contents of the red box explain the mystery of his father's long absence during the 1950s.

Czechoslovakia was behind the iron curtain; Vladimir Ss, a documentary filmmaker of considerable talent, was drafted into the army and sent to China to teach filmmaking. He left his wife, daughter, and young son, Peter, thinking he would be home for Christmas. Two Christmases would pass before he was heard from again: Vladimir Ss was lost in Tibet. He met with the Dalai Lama; he witnessed China's invasion of Tibet. When he returned to Prague, he dared not talk to his friends about all he had seen and experienced. But over and over again he told Peter about his Tibetan adventures. Weaving their two stories together - that of the father lost in Tibet and that of the small boy in Prague, lost without his father - Ss draws from his father's diary and from his own recollections of his father's incredible tales to reach a spiritual homecoming between father and son. With his sublime pictures, inspired by Tibetan Buddhist art and linking history to memory, Peter Ss gives us an extraordinary book - a work of singular artistry and rare imagination.

A Junior Library Guild Selection.



Card catalog description
The author recreates his father's visit to Tibet and the wondrous things that he found there.


About the Author
Peter Sís is an internationally acclaimed author, illustrator, and filmmaker. He was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and studied painting and filmmaking at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague, and at the Royal College of Art in London. His most recent book, Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei, was the winner of a Caldecott Honor citation, and his illustrations often appear in The New York Times Book Review. He lives in New York City.

ANNOTATION

The author recreates his father's visit to Tibet and the wondrous things that he found there.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For most of his childhood, the old lacquered box had been beyond his reach in his father's study. Now he was being summoned home to discover its carefully guarded secrets. Opening the red box, Peter Sis finds the diary his father kept when he was lost in Tibet in the mid-1950s. As he turns the brittle pages, covered with faded handwriting and fine drawings, and examines the small treasures that were hidden with the diary, Sis becomes the accidental traveler trekking through Tibet. At the same time he remembers the small boy who longed for his father to come back and recalls the fantastic stories his father told him on his return - stories that seemed more like fairy tales than real life. Bit by bit, the mystery of his father's journey is revealed; in reliving it, Sis finds the man who had been taken from him many years before and the magical place that held him hostage.

FROM THE CRITICS

Richard Bernstein - The New York Times

[This] is...a charming book and a visually beautiful one, but....it is too childlike in tone and structure to engage the adult mind even while its adult themes are not for children....[His father] allowed his imagination free rein. So did Mr. Sis the younger, and we are the beneficiaries of that, even as he whets but does not satisfy our curiosity.

Scott Veale - The New York Times Book Review

...[W]ith its mystical underpinnings and the muted sadness that washes over the whole enterprise, it is ...poetic testimony to the power of the imagination to transfigure reality.

Mark Feeney

Tibet: Through the Red Box may well be the most visually arresting book to be published in the United States this year. —The Boston Globe

Book Magazine

...[E]xquisitely designed...creates a magical feeling about Tibet....Impossible to categorize, Tibet will mesmerize both children and adults.

Publishers Weekly

In this visually enticing, magically appealing, oversized volume, Czechoslovakian-born illustrator Sis applies his considerable gifts to painting a spellbinding portrait of his father's experiences in Tibet, where he was sent in the 1950s to instruct the Chinese in documentary filmmaking. Vladimir Sis was actually drafted by the Chinese government to record the construction of a highway from China into Tibet; he was to be gone more than two years, unable to communicate with his family. During that time, China invaded the neighboring country, and Sis senior witnessed events he dared not describe even after he returned home, except through "magical stories" he related to his son. The diary he kept during his sojourn in Tibet was locked in a red box, which his son only saw for the first time in 1994, when he received a cryptic message from his father: "The diary is now yours." Here Sis re-creates a facsimile of the diary with excerpts handwritten upon parchment-like backgrounds on double-page spreads brimming with pencil sketches of the events described (e.g., "The road looks like a cut into a beautiful cake"). He then magnifies the more uncanny aspects of the journal via the tales told to him by his father, recollected from childhood, which are printed on the succeeding spread. One entry describes a boy wearing bells who tracks down the filmmaker in the middle of nowhere to deliver a letter from his family; Sis then follows with "The Jingle-Bell Boy," festooning the account with a trail of rhododendron-leaf markings that lead his father ultimately to the Dalai Lama. The guileless prose of both father and son makes Sis's juxtaposition of the journal records with his own childhood memories all the more poignant. The luminous colors of the artwork, the panoramas of Tibetan topography and the meticulous intermingling of captivating details and the mystical aspects of Tibetan culture make this an extraordinary volume that will appeal to readers of all ages.Read all 10 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Robert Thurman

Priceless, extraordinary work. I had no idea there was such an exquisite thing as this that existed on earth. — Author of Inner Revolution

ACCREDITATION