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About
the Author
Peter Sís Returns with his Most Personal Work Yet
Peter Sís’s newest book with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, The Wall: Growing Up Behind The Iron Curtain, represents the most personal work to-date from the MacArthur Fellowship winner. In it, Sís tells of his upbringing in Communist Czechoslovakia, where the struggle to keep artistic freedoms and expression alive was a continual battle in the face of government censorship. The book has already received early critical acclaim, including Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews.
For more information, click
here.
Listen to Peter Sís discuss his most recent book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, in an audio interview.
"With
Sís, everything is multilayered and full
of surprises. Getting it all in one read is
like seeing the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
an afternoon." --The
San Diego Tribune
Peter
Sís
is an internationally acclaimed illustrator,
author, and filmmaker. He was born in Brno,
Czechoslovakia, in 1949 and attended the Academy
of Applied Arts in Prague and the Royal College
of Art in London. He began his career as a
filmmaker and won the Golden Bear Award at the
1980 West Berlin Film Festival for an animated
short. He has also won the Grand Prix Toronto
and the Cine Golden Eagle Award, and in 1983
collaborated with Bob Dylan on You Got to
Serve Somebody. His film work is in the
permanent collection of the Museum of Modern
Art, New York.
In 1982 he was sent by the Czech
government to Los Angeles to produce a film for
the 1984 Winter Olympics. But the film project
was canceled when Czechoslovakia and the entire
Eastern bloc decided to boycott the Olympics.
Ordered by his government to return home, Peter
decided to stay in the United States and was
granted asylum. A correspondence with Maurice
Sendak led to a meeting and Peter's introduction
to children's book editors, and he moved to New
York City in 1984 to begin a new career.
Sís quickly became one of the
leading artists in the field with the
publication of the 1986 Newbery Medal Winner,
The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleishman. With more
than twenty books to his credit and almost as
many honors, Peter is a six-time winner of
The New York Times Book Review Best
Illustrated Book of the Year for Rainbow
Rhino, Beach Ball, Follow the
Dream, Komodo!, The Three Golden
Keys, and The Tree of Life: Charles
Darwin. Komodo! and A Small Tall
Tale from the Far Far North were each named
a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor
Book, and he has won a Society of Illustrators
Gold Medal for Komodo! and a Silver Medal
for The Three Golden Keys. Peter's book
Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei was a
1997 Caldecott Honor Book and has been published
in English, French, German, Czech, Portuguese,
Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.
Madlenka, Madlenka's Dog, and The Tree of
Life: Charles Darwin were all named New
York Times Book Review Notable Children's
Books of the Year.
In 2003, Peter was named a
MacArthur Fellow, an honor bestowed by the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
recognizing “talented individuals who have shown
extraordinary originality and dedication in
their creative pursuits and a marked capacity
for self-direction.”
In addition
to his prolific career as an author, Peter Sís
has contributed more than a thousand drawings to
The New York Times Book Review and his
illustrations have appeared in Time
magazine, The Atlantic Monthly,
Newsweek, Esquire and many other
magazines in the United States and abroad.
He has designed many book jackets
and posters, including, in 1984, the famous
poster for Milos Forman's Academy Award-winning
motion picture Amadeus. More recently, he
has completed a mural for the
Washington/Baltimore Airport, a poster for the
New York City subway system, and a stage set for
the Joffrey Ballet. He lends his art to many
mediums and will sometimes paint on any surface
he can find -- chairs, walls, eggs, boxes,
seashells, even hats. Peter recently created a
mural for New York City's 86th Street Lexington
Avenue subway station, working with the city's
Metropolitan Transit Authority. His work has
been exhibited in Prague, London, Zurich,
Hamburg, Los Angeles, and New York in both group
and one-man shows.
Most recently, in 2007, Peter
published The
Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain
(Frances Foster Books / Farrar, Straus and
Giroux / September 2007). Václav Havel, former
president of the Czech Republic, says of the
work,
“Peter Sís’s book is most of all
about the will to live one’s life in freedom and
should be required reading for all those who
take their freedom for granted.” In January
2008, the book was awarded The Robert F. Sibert
Medal and was also named a Caldecott Honor Book.
Peter Sís lives in the New York City area with
his wife and children.
Books
by Peter Sís
Copyright © 2002-2007
Peter Sís
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