The young library: Just the facts, please

Stories in these picture books will linger long after you finish them. They're all real. Peter Sis depicts what it was like growing up in a totalitarian society. Science writer Elaine Scott explains what happened to Pluto, the "former" planet. And youngsters looking to understand global warming will get it with a jazzy new handbook.

Story that wouldn't die

Author-illustrator Peter Sis might say he didn't want to tell his story about growing up behind the Iron Curtain. He tried to let it go, but the story pestered him until he wrote it. It's personal and powerful.

In "The Wall," Sis recounts his young life in Prague, then- Czechoslovakia, just as the Soviet Union closed its fist around Eastern Europe. We first see him as a naked infant with big blue eyes, a swirl of black hair on his forehead and a red pencil in his right hand. Confining him on three sides are sentences that describe his world of Communism, the Iron Curtain and the Cold War.

Sis constructs his memoir like a graphic novel. He uses black-and-white pencil drawings with multiple accents in red to show the pervasive influence of the Communist Party and to emphasize the stark, brutal time. Not until he's a teenager with dreams of freedom does he add full color.

In the little graphic story boxes, Sis shows the grim details of his life -- learning Russian, compulsory; joining the Communist youth movement, compulsory; collecting scrap metal, compulsory. At the bottom of each page is his neutral narrative in the third person. Under the compulsory bits he writes, "After drawing whatever he wanted to at home, he drew what he was told to at school." On that page, readers see Sis (easy to spot by his hairstyle) in an art class in a museum. All the students at the easels are painting the hammer and sickle symbol in red. Besides seeing Sis in most drawings, readers will spot lurking policemen, drawn with pig-snout noses.

As a boy, Sis accepts the government's brainwashing and obeys orders. As a teenager, he starts learning about banned books, jammed radio signals, rock 'n' roll and censored letters. Music by the Beatles and the Beach Boys slips through cracks in the wall. These bright bits allow Sis to dream in color. In between the graphic pages, Sis writes a journal about his dreams and the political developments. There's mention of Soviet accomplishments in space, sneaky false borders to catch "bad guys" trying to escape, the rise and fall of blue jeans as permitted clothing, harvesting hops and, in 1968, glimmers of more freedoms. That light fades with the return of Soviet tanks.

Sis' memoir is a masterpiece of understatement in a politically complex world. It's a world he didn't understand as a boy, but one that he poignantly portrays for today's children so they may value their freedom.

Explaining a demotion

Until Aug. 24, 2006, there were nine planets in our solar system. That day, astronomers demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet. Explaining it all for young readers is author Elaine Scott in "When Is a Planet Not a Planet?" She laces her crystal-clear prose with analogies that make it easy for youngsters to grasp how the astronomers decided to boot Pluto from the majors.

Scott starts with a concise history of astronomy and how scientists go from theory to proof and law. Pluto was discovered in 1930, but its status was problematic from the start. It had a rocky core instead of a gaseous one like its bigger neighbors. It was small and had an unusual orbit. As scientists continued to spot planetlike objects in Pluto's neighborhood, the little planet's status came into question. Amazingly, before that demotion a year ago there was no standard definition for a planet. Now there are three, all created by the International Astronomical Union.

Could Pluto's status change again? Readers of Scott's book will know the answer. She includes a glossary, bibliography and Web sites.

Plugged in

In "The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming," writers Laurie David and Cambria Gordon make the science of global warming easy to understand and suggest many ways families can help reverse the problem.Their oversized paperback is full of colorful graphics and pictures. Best of all, it's written in kid-friendly lingo with lots of short copy blocks to explain extra bits, such as penguins with radios, and bright ideas. Here's one: "If every kid in America swapped one regular (light) bulb for a compact fluorescent ... we could save enough energy to light more than 15 million homes for an entire year."

About the writer:

• Judy Green can be reached at jgreen@sacbee.com.