The Lady With the Books by Kathy Stinson

Anneliese and her brother Peter are hungry and wandering the ruined city of Munich. The streets are filled with the chunks of broken pavement and wrecked buildings. When she finds a discarded orange peel on the ground, she gives it to her brother. 

Anneliese spots a long line leading into a building and wonders if they are giving out food. So she and Peter get in line. But inside the great hall are more books than Anneliese could count! She remembers when her Papa used to take her to the library and when he read to her at bedtime. But Papa and the library are now gone.

Peter finds a book about an elephant that is wearing a suit and intrigued he begs Anneliese to read it to him. But she can't read in English. They spend the rest of the day looking at books in the hall until they are the only ones left. They must leave, but the lady in charge tells them they may return tomorrow. 

At home, Mama makes the last bit of cooked barley to Anneliese and Peter. Her mother hopes to trade oma's old teapot for some vegetables. At the market Anneliese is tempted to steal a sausage because she is so hungry. Instead, she and Peter head back to the hall with the books. There they find the lady reading The Story of Ferdinand to a group of children. Although the story is written in English, the lady reads it in German. Afterwards, the lady suggests some books  that both Peter and Anneliese might enjoy. Her suggestions are stories from many different countries.

Returning home, Anneliese finds that her mother has made a delicious stew, thanks to the generosity of the farmer and her lucky find of a pigeon. They now have a stew for two days. That night Anneliese decides she will help to clear the student near the library so that one day it will again be filled with books, just like the lady's with the book's hall.

Discussion

The Lady With The Books tells the story of Jella Lepman, a Jewish woman who returned to Germany during the post-war period to help the country recover from World War II. Jella Lepman was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1891. She attended school in Stuttgart as well as Lausanne, Switzerland. She married Gustave Lepman in 1922 and they had two children, Anne-Marie and Gunther. Gustave served in World War I but died in 1922 from injuries suffered during the war. 

Jella began working as an editor at Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt after her husband's death. She began writing, publishing a children's book, The Sleeping Sunday in 1927 as well as a play. At this time, Jella also became politically active, joining the German Democratic Party, running unsuccessfully for a seat in the German Reichstag in 1929.

With the rise of Hitler and Nazism in 1933, Jella was no longer able to keep her job at the newspaper because she was Jewish. Eventually, she fled to England in 1936 with her two children. With Germany's defeat in 1945, Jella was asked to return to Germany, working with the United States Army in the American Occupied zone in the capacity of an advisor to determine how to help German children and women.

The Lady with the Books picks up the story of Jella Lepman from this point. Jella eventually founded the International Youth Library in 1949 and was it's director until 1957. She also went on to found the International Board for Young People (IBBY) in 1953. This organization is responsible for literacy in children and young adults.

Stinson has crafted a realistic story that highlights Jella Lepman's humanitarian work to rehabilitate the children of Germany in the postwar period. Many cities in Germany were reduced to rubble, society was fragmented with the widespread destruction and years of war and as always, it was the children and women who suffered the most. Lepman's work was based on the power of literature to heal and change. This was especially important in Germany, a country that had spent the previous twenty-five years labelling certain people as "undesirables". Her travelling exhibition of books featured stories from many different countries. As Stinson notes in the back pages of her picture book, Jella believed "that good children's books from around the world could create 'bridges of understanding' between people..." 

The simple story of a girl and her brother wandering the devastated city streets highlights the struggles in the aftermath of war that children encounter; hunger, poverty, and loss. But it is also a story of hope and redemption, as the main character, a young girl decides to work to help her city recover. The colourful artwork Marie LaFrance, an award-wining Canadian illustrator living in Montreal, Quebec, captures all of these aspects. Her colourful illustrations were rendered in graphite and coloured digitally in Photoshop. The Lady With The Books is ultimately a story of how each person can work to heal the world and make it a better place.

Book Details:

The Lady With The Books by Kathy Stinson
Toronto: Kids Can Press     2020