I Dream of Peace: Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia [Hardcover]

James P. Grant (Author), Maurice Sendak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994

Drawings and writings by children in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia reflect their feelings about the war.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Piercing through the often numbing effects of conventional news coverage, this extraordinary collection of drawings, poems and other writings by children traumatized by war puts an achingly human face on the tragedies of Bosnians, Serbs, Croats and other former Yugoslavians. The entries, gathered from UNICEF-sponsored art therapy programs in 1992 and 1993, are disturbing, powerful and deeply moving. Five-year-old refugee Nedim poignantly queries: "I had a new tricycle, red and yellow and with a bell. . . . Do you think they have destroyed my tricycle too?" More complicated fears trouble Alik, a 13-year-old refugee who saw his home burned to the ground by soldiers, saw his uncle and a neighbor machine-gunned to death and saw the people of his village deported by train to detention camps: "I saw it all! Now I can't sleep. I try to forget, but it doesn't work. I have such difficulty feeling anything anymore." Another 13-year-old, Mario from Dubrovnik, confides, "This is the worst memory in my heart. . . . I wouldn't want anyone to experience it. The women and children are being taken away by force to the detention camp. I can't get the picture out of my head. . . . " Like their words, these young artists' drawings reveal childhoods shattered by violence--10-year-old Belma from Sarajevo, for example, draws a trio of children hideously wounded by shrapnel; her picture bears the plaintive title, "We were only waiting for candies." The final pages record a remarkably resilient hope that blossoms despite the devastation, and, wrenchingly, a plea for peace. A small but well-chosen selection of black-and-white photographs of ordinary, innocent children serves as an added reminder of the absurdity of war. The book is being published by other houses in 13 countries and in nine languages; all proceeds will go to the UNICEF "I Dream of Peace Fund," which supports worldwide programs for children caught in war. The American edition also contains a preface by Maurice Sendak. All ages.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-7. Like the famous collection from the Holocaust concentration camp, I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1978/1993), this anthology puts a human and individual face on ethnic cleansing. The pictures, poems, and letters by young people of the former Yugoslavia are drawn from art therapy and counseling sessions that help the traumatized confront their war experiences. There are no slogans. These children bear witness to war up close: "They picked my uncle and a neighbor. Then they machine gunned them to death." Displacement is personal: "The women and children are being taken away by force to the detention camp. I can't get the picture out of my head because I've experienced it myself." Suddenly ethnic identity is an issue: "My father is a Croat, my mother is a Serb, but I don't know who I am." There are pictures of bombs and bombardment and a crayon drawing of a hairy monster bringing down a person. Yet in the end it's the mundane details of ordinary life that are most compelling. Readers will see that behind the stream of refugees on the evening news are kids who long for homework and football. A five-year-old remembers his new tricycle, "red and yellow and with a bell." And there's the 12-year-old's wish list that begins "Jeans: Levis 501 . . ." This has been developed under the auspices of UNICEF, whose earnings from the book's sale will go to the I Dream of Peace Fund to support programs for children affected by war throughout the world. Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062511289
• ISBN-13: 978-0062511287
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,454,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Images & Dreams of Peace, May 28, 2005

By 

Karen K. Lewis (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Dream of Peace: Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia (Hardcover)

UNICEF volunteers offered displaced children in the former Yugoslavia workshops in art and writing. These children's voices are here, sharing their experiences with the world. A valuable classroom teaching aid. Third & Fourth graders especially seem to connect with their international counterparts. Colorful drawings, clear poems (trans. to English). I often use this book as an introduction to "write and draw your images of peace". Or, for those classrooms that are in a battle zone, this book would allow children to explore and to express their complicated reactions and visions. Also useful in lower grades as the drawings are very accessible. The vision is: out of war, peace is possible.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dreams of Peace Amid the Nightmares of War and Genocide, September 28, 2008

By 

Daniel L. Berek (Flanders, NJ, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Dream of Peace: Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia (Hardcover)

In 1991, the airwaves were ringing with President George H. W. Bush's call to arms to stop an act of war... in Kuwait. At the time, we heard hardly a word of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Would the president only have had the opportunity to have heard the poignant voices in "I Dream of Peace." The title of this touching book comes from Aleksandar, a boy in Sarajevo, who was severely burned in an explosion. The saddest fact of twentieth-century warfare is the trend of taking the fighting from the battlefield to civilian areas, where children become the targets of the attrocities committed. A trend, yes; the adults who the children count on as our role models had evidently not learned the lesson from another famous testament of children's cries, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a collection of poetry and artwork by children at Terezin. The only thing that had changed in a half century is that "The Holocaust" became "Ethnic Cleansing."

These pictures and poems are cries of pain; yet, like so much of the spontaneity of children's creativity, they ring with hope. This book is divided into four chapters. The first three, Cruel War, The Day They Killed My House, and My Nightmare show the war from the eyes of its most innocent and vulnerable victims. With brutal honesty, the children paint burning villages, planes dropping bombs, and soldiers and tanks shooting every which way. "You flee the misery, but misery follows," says Zana. Dunja wonders why, after living in a community that celebrated its diversity, "it's so important, everyone asking who you are, what you do, where you come from." In a scene that could have come from the pages of Anne Frank or Zlata Filipovic, she remarks, "The weather is growing very cold now. No longer can you hear the singing of the birds, only the sound of the children crying for a lost mother or father, a brother or a sister." Betraying here mere 12 years of age, Maida, from Skopje, remarks, "War is the saddest word that flows from my quivering lips.... It is a dealdy bird that destroys our home, and deprives us of our childhood. War is the evilest of birds, turning the streets, and the world into an inferno."

The final chapter, "When I Close My Eyes I Dream of Peace," portrays the hope for peace. In stark contrast to the dark images of the first three chapters, these pictures are rendered in bright colors. Students from a fifth-grade class in Zenica mention Anne Frank's diary, which they read. "Like Anne Frank fifty years ago, we wait for peace. She didn't live to see it. Will we?" they ask. The book ends with a plea from Edina, a 12-year-old girl from Sarajevo, to all the children throughout the world, that they keep the children of Bosnia in their thoughts and hearts and to never allow what happened to them to happen again. Are the adults listening?

4.0 out of 5 stars War self-evidently assaults early childhood development., November 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: I Dream of Peace: Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia (Hardcover)

To read "Jim" Grant, former Executive Director ofUNICEF, is to read Cole P. Dodge--who survives Grant and remainssingularly dedicated to bettering the healthcare delivery systems to both women and children the world over.