The Viewer’ by Shaun Tan and Gary Crew was a truly dark and moody book that gripped the children as soon as they saw the cover. Unlike the previous books that I had been given, I did not read this myself before sharing it with the children which meant that it was a new experience for all of us. As a law clerk, Michael marries his girlfriend Gertrud when she gets pregnant. Over the course of their marriage, Michael never tells her about Hanna but often compares Gertrud to Hanna in his mind. The marriage lasts only five years, and Michael’s guilt over making his daughter Julia suffer through their divorce pushes him to become more open about Hanna in his relationships. However, he doesn’t appear satisfied with the women’s reactions to his past with Hanna and he eventually stops talking about her. Introduce the book The Viewer by Gary Crew and Shaun Tan (make sure to choose the edition published in 2012 as it contains detail pertinent to these lessons).

I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyway, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that. And you know, when no one understands you, no one can call you to account. Not even the court could call me to account. But the dead can. They understand. They don't even have to have been there, but if they do, they understand even better. Here in prison they were with me a lot. They came every night, whether I wanted them to or not. Before the trial I could still chase them away when they wanted to come. [18]

The Red Tree

Hanna Schmitz, a former guard at Auschwitz. She is 36, illiterate and working as a tram conductor in Neustadt when she first meets 15-year-old Michael. She takes a dominant position in their relationship. Uhl, Heidemarie; Golsan, Richard J. (2006-09-20). Lebow, Richard Ned; Kansteiner, Wulf; Fogu, Claudio (eds.). The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe. doi: 10.1515/9780822388333. hdl: 1811/30027. ISBN 9780822388333. S2CID 156505244.

The Reader ( German: Der Vorleser) is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink, published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the Nachgeborenen, those who came after. Like other novels in the genre of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to come to terms with the past, The Reader explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses die and living memory fades. [1] By the time Michael finishes his studies, the student movement is already underway, and the narrator contemplates his generation’s struggle to deal with collective guilt for the Nazi past. Like most of his generation, Michael had assigned blame to his parents. Though Michael eventually realizes that his parents are blameless, Hanna is not, and he feels guilty for having chosen and loved her.As part of the class, the students attend the trial on a weekly basis. At the court, when the defendants’ names are called, Michael discovers that Hanna is one of the former Nazi guards on trial. However, despite the pain that Hanna’s departure once gave him, he “felt nothing” at learning this news. During her preliminary hearing, Hanna reveals that she rejected a promotion at her factory job shortly before signing up as a prison guard, making it appear to the jury that she had voluntarily, if not enthusiastically, joined the SS. Hanna’s lawyer does not do much to help her salvage this first bad impression, and Hanna is kept under detention for having ignored summonses. Unlike his classmates, who attend only weekly, Michael attends the trial every day, always watching Hanna. As Michael becomes exposed to more horrors for a prolonged period of time, he begins to feel numb and is emotionally distant, not unlike the survivors and even perpetrators of the Holocaust who are exposed to evil on a regular basis. Try reading the sentences aloud without the added words in the middle. The class will use similar grammatical features in the next lesson when they write their own character description. In Part 3, after the trial is over, Michael spends much of his time obsessing over his studies and avoiding others, so that the numbness that had come over him during the trial remains. Despite his aloofness, Michael is invited to a ski trip with his classmates and he accepts. Both emotionally numb and indifferent to the cold, Michael comes down with a fever, but once he recovers, he feels the pain and horror he had during the trial. What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to make the horrors an object of inquiry is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose? [22] Intertextuality [ edit ] Gary Crew has been awarded the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the year four times: twice for Book of the Year for Young Adult Older Readers (Strange Objects in 1991 and Angel’s Gate in 1993) and twice for Picture Book of the Year with First Light in 1993 (illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe) and The Watertower (illustrated by Steven Woolman) in 1994. Gary’s illustrated book, Memorial (with Shaun Tan) was awarded the Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book in 2000 and short listed for the Queensland Premier’s Awards. He has also won the Wilderness Society Award, the Whitley Award and the Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction.

After the man tells an anecdote about a photograph of Jews being shot in Russia, one that he supposedly saw, but which showed an unusual level of insight into what a Nazi officer might have been thinking, Michael suspects him of being that officer and confronts him. The man stops the car and asks him to leave. [11] Metaphor [ edit ] Germany had the highest literacy rate in Europe; Franklin suggests that Hanna's illiteracy represented the ignorance that allowed ordinary people to commit atrocities. [3] Nicholas Wroe, in The Guardian, likewise writes of the relationship between Hanna's illiteracy and the Third Reich's "moral illiteracy," [12] and Ron Rosenbaum of Slate says that Hanna is "a stand-in for the German people and their supposed inability to 'read' the signs that mass murder was being done in their name, by their fellow citizens." [13] When Michael starts a new school year in the 11th grade, he makes new friends, including Sophie, on whom he has a crush. He begins to go to the swimming pool with his classmates, and becomes torn between spending time with his friends and spending time with Hanna. Whenever he has fights with Hanna he comes increasingly resentful of how she bullies him into surrendering, but he also always begs for forgiveness, as he is afraid of losing her. As he grows closer to his friends but neglects to tell them about Hanna, he begins to feel as if he is betraying her by denying her importance in his life. One day, while Michael is at the swimming pool, he sees Hanna from a distance. Unsure of what to do, he hesitates before getting up, but in that moment she is gone. There are a few key ideas that emerge; that all the mechanisms work to record and re-play images of violence and death, especially the collapse of successive human civilisations, whether by natural disaster or self-destruction. The use of circles, spirals and other cyclical patterns through the illustrations emphasis the idea of life and death revolutions, that things are on one hand mortal and immortal in their patterns. There are numerous ancient symbols of this, such as the serpent biting its own tail, and the concept of time as cyclical, rather than linear, is historically much more dominant. The belief that civilisation progresses continuously is ultimately a temporary illusion; things either change radically or collapse, the current ecological crisis of our own age proves the case. Still we go on as if oblivious to the slow disaster unfolding before us.The mechanisms around the boy’s eye as he watches the disks is quite elaborately worked out visually, though did not read clearly in print in the original edition. In 2011 I redesigned the book, given it was still in print, and the text was edited to accompany reproductions of illustrations closer to my original intentions in 1997. It’s now clear that different sections rotate and telescope inwards as the boy’s pupil dilates, so that eventually his pupil becomes that of a new big mechanical eye. As critics of The Reader argued increasingly on historical grounds, pointing out that everybody in Germany could and should have known about Hitler's intentions towards the Jews, there has not been a great deal of discussion about the character "Hanna" having been born not in Germany proper, but in the City of Hermannstadt (modern-day Sibiu), a long-standing centre of German culture in Transylvania, Romania. The first study on the reasons Germans from Transylvania entered the SS painted a complex picture. [38] It appeared only in 2007, 12 years after the novel was published; in general, discussions on The Reader have solidly placed Hanna in the context of Germany. That said, the novel is about Michael, not Hanna; the original German title, Der Vorleser, specifically indicates one who reads aloud, as Michael does for Hanna. [16] Jewish woman, who wrote about surviving the death march from Auschwitz. She lives in New York City when Michael visits her near the end of the story, still suffering from the loss of her own family.

The first twelve titles were obviously all entered at the same time; at first I probably just read, It was several months before I sent off the tapes. At first I didn't want to send just bits of it, so Icecream specializes in smart, no-frills software, and Icecream Ebook Reader is no exception. It supports EPUB, MOBI, PDF and FB2 ebook formats, and once you’ve imported your books they’re arranged in a neat bookshelf with a choice of viewing options. One particularly handy feature is the ability to archive and export your ebooks; ideal if you use more than one PC and don’t want the hassle of importing your books twice. There’s no cloud syncing though.

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Gary Crew writes short stories, novels and picture books. Gary is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. He is particularly interested in researching the creative links between fiction and nonfiction in his novels and the creative interface between print text and visual text in his picture books. During his publishing career of over 30 years Gary has won the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year four times, twice for novels and twice for his picture books; the New South Wales Premier's Award, the Victorian Premier's Award, the American Children's Book of Distinction, the Aurealis Best Children's Short Fiction, the Wilderness Society's Award for Environmental Writing, and the Royal Geographic Society Whitley Award. Gary lives on the waterfront of subtropical Bribie Island. When he is not writing or lecturing, he loves to walk by the sea or read. I could have reviewed this as a children's book. With an age recommendation of middle primary; an art style of detailed drawn; theme of inquisitiveness and history; the setting of a child space. But to me, this is a book this a book that is as valuable for adults. This is true to the style of both Gary Crew and Shaun Tan. Both of them create works that can be read by all. Where more details are seen as the reader gets older. If a teacher wanted to use it in a lesson with older students there is potential for a thought exercise about whether they would do what Tristan did. And the cost of inquisitiveness. Crew and Tan have worked together since The Viewer, publishing Memorial in 1999. Schlink's book was well received in his native country and elsewhere, winning several awards. Der Spiegel wrote that it was one of the greatest triumphs of German literature since Günter Grass's The Tin Drum. It sold 500,000 copies in Germany and was listed 14th of the 100 favorite books of German readers in a television poll in 2007. [2] It won the German Hans Fallada Prize in 1998, and became the first German book to top The New York Times bestselling books list. It has been translated into 45 different languages and has been included in the curricula of college-level courses in Holocaust literature and German language and German literature. It was adapted by David Hare into the 2008 film of the same name directed by Stephen Daldry; the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Kate Winslet winning for her portrayal of Hanna Schmitz. The books read in the novel, both by Michael to Hanna and by Hanna herself, are significant. Michael selects texts from the Enlightenment, "with its emphasis on moral and ethical absolutes," and German classics by which means he tries to reclaim German heritage. [5] The texts include Friedrich Schiller's Intrigue and Love and Gotthold Lessing's Emilia Galotti.