Picture books can be tools with extraordinary impact, and not just for the youngest readers. Something about the interplay of words and pictures invites readers to look and understand ideas more deeply. This is particularly true of picture books about challenging themes, books like The Whispering Town.Based on a true story, the book tells the story of young Anett and her parents in 1943 in Nazi-occupied Denmark. They are hiding a Jewish woman and her son, Carl, in their cellar until a fishing boat can take them across the sound to safety in neutral Sweden. With the help of the baker, the librarian, the farmer, and her neighbors, Anett keeps Carl and his mother safe even as Nazi soldiers search her street for hidden Jews. With the Nazis closing in, and worried about Carl’s safety, Anett thinks of a clever and unusual plan to get Carl and his mother safely to the harbor on a cloudy night without the moon to guide them.
A picture books depends on both its words and its images to be compelling. If you notice in the image below, the illustrator of The Whispering Town, Fabio Santomauro, drew the characters in a deliberate way—in shadow, so much so that the outlines of the characters are all that can be seen.
Santomauro shares the book with local students, explaining how an illustrator tells a story with images. In demonstrating his art—with 180 students in Bitonto in Torrione Angioino (Italy)—he helps students understand something else too, that the stories of the Holocaust are important to tell and hear with great care.
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