Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime

Gr 2-5--Readers are introduced to the world-famous reviver of the lost art of mime in this attractive and accessible picture-book biography. Melding Marceau's childhood and evolution as an artist with world events, Spielman reveals how the young son of a kosher butcher in Strasbourg, France, pursued his dream, despite the Nazi invasion in 1939. After his father took him to see a silent Charlie Chaplin film when he was five, "The boy was fascinated that the actor could make his audience laugh and cry without ever speaking a word. Marcel decided he would grow up to be like Charlie." After his city was evacuated, he and his older brother were sent to study art in Limoges, the center of the French Resistance. There, he used his artistic talent to doctor children's identification cards. He also led groups of Jewish children to the safety of the Swiss border; one illustration shows him with a group of young charges on a train singing heartily as a clueless Nazi soldier claps enthusiastically. After his father was sent to Auschwitz, he went to a children's home outside of Paris, where he taught art and drama. At age 20, a famous actor and director saw him perform and encouraged him to study drama. After the war, he perfected his trademark character, a role he played for the next 60 years. The final spread includes color and black-and-white photographs of the performer as Bip. Gauthier's childlike mixed-media illustrations feature myriad rosy-cheeked characters and capture both the whimsy of Marceau's performances and the more somber conditions of war-torn France.--Barbara Auerbach, PS 217, Brooklyn, NY

"Reaching well beyond his role as a mime, Spielman's (Janusz Korczak's Children) picture-book biography puts a fascinating new face on Marceau (1923-2007), tracing his career in entertainment back to his childhood idolization of Charlie Chaplin, who 'could make his audience laugh and cry without ever speaking a word.' As a boy in Strasbourg, Marcel amused peers with his impersonations of animals, but WWII changed the tenor of his life. Gauthier's (The Tooth) airy illustrations become (at least briefly) more somber as they portray the evacuation of Marceau's hometown, and his work with the French Resistance as a teenager, which entailed leading Jewish children across the Swiss border to safety, often disguising them as scouts on their way to camp. After his father was deported to Auschwitz, Marceau's mother sent him to a children's home, where he pursued his dramatic aspirations, eventually studying, perfecting, and teaching mime. Terrific photos of Marceau on stage close out this well-rounded biography and complement Gauthier's more abstract portraits of the man who took Chaplin's flair a step further to revive 'the ancient and almost forgotten art of silence.'" —Publishers Weekly