Gallaz, C. & Innocenti, R. (1985). Rose Blanche. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, Inc.
Genre of week: Picture Books. YA Reading Children Reading (to 4th or 5th grade)
Like the Sendak pictures play a huge role in making this book another member of Week 1’s Picture Books genre. But there the similarity ends. Rose Blanche is narrated by an innocent child who never understands that she has brushed up against evil. As she narrates the various events in the story, Rose’s tone never loses that innocence but the pictures depict something completely sinister, including the Nazi concentration camps. It is as if Rose is encapsulated and immune to what is really happening. “Rose Blanche disappeared that day. She had walked into the forest.” Followed by the culmination of the book: “There was a shot.” Gallaz and Innocenti have caught the power of red beret on the dead little girl on a heap of dead bodies in Schindler’s List: The horror of man’s capacity for brutality to other men.
Unlike the Sendak though were everything stays on the same level and no one is threatened, here Rose is in mortal danger from the first page. Gallaz and Innocenti use a somber tone to create a troubling tension between what the pictures are really saying and what we older readers understand as the truth of the situation. Rose’s tone of innocence and purity intensifies that. Her name translates from French as “Red White.” The very name of the book shows that for this child purity leads her to death, turns her white purity to bleeding red.
I am struggling with this book because I am sure how it can be used with children. Don’t see how it would appeal to children’s interests. Certainly Rose’s altruistic acts of feeding the concentration camp children show that children appreciate and empathize with other’s suffering and how children often have to be taught prejudice to others. Certainly can see how it plainly makes the point that the Holocaust was a supremely horrific thing which Gallaz and Innocenti’s narrative technique of irony beautifully underscores.
The big Question: To which children would I feel comfortable reading this?
Wendel, most certainly you would use this only with older children - at least no younger than 4th or 5th grade. Often we are worried about how much children can handle and then are surprised at how much they CAN handle. But we also know there are some really sensitive little guys out there. I'd save this one (which is a wonderful choice) for middle and high school.
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