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Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 43, Issue 1, pp 27–47 | Cite as

Navigating Worlds of “Trouble and Woe and Worse” in Children’s Literature: An Exploration into the Double Text of Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak’s Brundibar

  • Kristin M. Larsen
Commemorative Issue for Dr. Lawrence Sipe
First Online:
  • 303 Downloads

Abstract

In this article, the author explores the richly layered double text of Kushner and Sendak’s picturebook, Brundibar (2003)—the historical context of Brundibár as a Holocaust-era children’s operetta by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister, and the present day manifestation of Brundibar as a children’s picturebook. In order to contextualize the discussion of Kushner and Sendak’s text, Brundibar’s historical origins in Nazi-annexed Czechoslovakia and its transition to the stage in the Nazi “model” concentration camp, Terezín, is presented. An extensive semiotic analysis of Kushner and Sendak’s illustrations and text is also provided within the framework of what Kushner (The art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the present, 2003) terms “a world of trouble and woe and worse” (p. 210). Furthermore, the author discusses the development of Sendak’s Hitlerian Brundibar and the struggles that both Kushner and Sendak faced as they considered how to portray the story’s antagonist, given their somewhat differing conceptions of which difficult themes and topics children should be exposed to during childhood. To round out this discussion, the author explores pedagogical implications for teachers as they read difficult texts, particularly Holocaust texts, with children.

Keywords

Constructions of childhood Holocaust Difficult texts Hitler Brundibar Semiotic analysis Tony Kushner Maurice Sendak Bumble-Ardy 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

In addition to Dr. Sipe’s teaching and mentoring, I am also indebted to the scholarship of Dr. Blanka Červinková (1942–2002) for the in-depth research and interviews she conducted to create one of the few comprehensive biographies of Hans Krása. Without her scholarship, I might not have been able to adequately round out Brundibár’s historical context within this work. I would also like to thank Patrick Rodgers, Traveling Exhibitions Coordinator at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, for sharing Maurice Sendak’s preliminary and final drawings for Brundibar with me during my visit to the Rosenbach to complete my research for this article. Finally, I would like to thank my good friends and colleagues, Rachel Skrlac-Lo and Todd Bates, and my husband, Jonathan Larsen, for all of their encouragement and support throughout the many stages of this journey.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaUSA
  2. 2.University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of EducationPhiladelphiaUSA

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