When Aninku and Pepicek Discover One Morning that Their Mother is Sick, They Rush to Town for Milk to Make Her Better. Their Attempt to Earn Money by Singing is Thwarted by a Bullying, Bellowing Hurdy-Gurdy Grinder, Brundibar, Who Tyrannizes the Town Square and Chases All Other Street Musicians Away. Befriended by Three Intelligent Talking Animals and Three Hundred Helpful Schoolkids, Brother and Sister Sing for the Money, Buy the Milk, Defeat the Bully, and Triumphantly Return Home. This Book is Based on a Czech Opera of the Same Name ("Brundibar" is Czech Slang for "Bumblebee"), With a Libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister, Set to Music by Hans Krasa. Completed in 1938, the Opera was Performed Fifty-Five Times by the Children of Terezin, the Nazi Concentration Camp. Krasa, Who was Jewish, was also Imprisoned in Terezin. He was Killed in Auschwitz in 1944.Based on a Czech opera for children that was performed 55 times by the children of the Terezin Nazi concentration camp, this tale of two children bullied by a bellowing hurdy-gurdy grinder is now told in this storybook. Illustrations.
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Playwright Tony Kushner was born in New York City and raised in Louisiana. In addition to his plays, Kushner teaches at New York University and has co-written an opera with Bobby McFerrin. Kushner is best known for Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, a two-part seven-hour play that has won many awards (two Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, two Drama Desk Awards, the Evening Standard Award, the New York Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award). It was also selected one of the ten best plays of the 20th century by London's Royal National Theatre.
Maurice Bernard Sendak was born on June 10, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of three children. His parents were Polish Jews who had come to the United States before the start of World War I. His first professional job as an illustrator (while he was still in high school) involved adapting the "Mutt and Jeff" newspaper comic strip to a comic book format. He later worked as a window-display director for New York's famous toy store, F.A.O. Schwartz, while attending night school at the Art Students League. In 1950, Ursula Nordstrom, children's book editor at Harper and Brothers, gave him his first chance to illustrate a children's book. His talents were soon in demand. He wrote his first book, Kenny's Window, in 1956 and went on to become a prolific author-illustrator. Sendak is noted for his zany characters and fantastic themes. In 1964 he won the prestigious Caldecott medal for his picture book Where The Wild Things Are. Although occasionally Sendak's work has provoked controversy, he has become one of the best known and beloved creators of children's books and has received many awards. His works include Chicken Soup with Rice; In the Night Kitchen; Outside Over There; Higglety Pigglety Pop; and We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy. In 1970, he was the first American to receive the Hans Christian Andersen International Medal and in 1997 he received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton. Characters from two of Sendak's books were the basis of an animated television special, Really Rosie, which first aired in 1975. Sendak was also the set designer and lyricist for a subsequent off-Broadway musical of the same title, with music composed by Carol King. He was the lyricist, as well as the set and costume designer, for the original production of an opera based on Where The Wild Things Are (with music by Oliver Knussen) in 1980. In addition, Sendak has designed sets and costumes for performances of operas by Mozart, Prokofiev, and other classical composers.
