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Lisa Tetzner was born in 1895 in Zittau (Germany) and she has been a storyteller, a director of radio programs aimed to children and the author of numerous novels with social content (her work, The children from No. 67 is a classic of German young adults’ literature). She went to Switzerland into exile along with her husband, Kurt Held, who was persecuted by the Nazis. She died in 1963 in Carona (Tesino Canton).
Children aged twelve, thirteen years, were still sold during the mid 19th century in Tizino (Switzerland), to serve as chimney sweeps in Milan, where they would be kept as slaves and only a few of them would survive to that dangerous work. However, Giorgio, a thirteen years old boy from Verzasca valley will also find the friendship and solidarity of the Black Brothers, a secret organization of chimney sweeps.
A hundred years later, Lisa tetzner wrote about Giorgio’s luck and his dangerous runaway. She did it together with her husband, Kurt Held. Since he was banned from publishing, the resulting novel for young adults would be published in two volumes and only with Lisa Tetzner’s name, in 1941.
More than fifty years later, Hannes Binder studies the scene of the narrated events and the old pictures, without limiting to draw simple illustrations about the classic of German young adults’ literature: he actually narrates the novel with his pictures.
“An exciting graphic novel that relives the young adults’ series from 1941” (Die Zeit)
OBTAINED AWARDS:
- Seven best books for young readers list (Deutschlandfunk y Focus)
- Honor list of Catholic Prize to Young Adults’ Books (German Conference of Bishops)
- Luchs des Monats (Lynx of the month). Die Zeit newspaper and Bremen Radio.
-Troisdorfer Bilderbuchpreis (Troisdorf city award to Picture Books, Germany).
-"Pilla un libro" school list, for 4th, 5th and 7th grades (Germany)
- Honor List of Evangelical Charitable Work Publications (Germany)
- Honor List of Heinrich-Wolgast Prize, Young Adults’ Literature about work world (Germany).
"...brilliant etchings that explain the Dickensian adventures of Giorgio, a boy who is 12-13 years old when he is bought by a chimney sweep in Milan, who makes him work until he nearly dies… Binder has performed a careful work of historical documentation… A successful adaptation that gathers all the essential events of these boys’ distressed experiences, boys who were real human brooms that lost their lives in the rich people’s chimneys.” (CLIJ, #210).
“… The result of this new narrative proposal, brilliantly executed, is really attractive… This is an intelligent way to renew the contemporary classics among the readers, in order to achieve a literature that should not be only aimed to them.” (José Calvo in El Mundo, Málaga, 12.28.2007)
