Barroux, Stephane-Yves (illus.) Andre Leblanc (text): The Red Piano.

[A] BARROUX, Stephane-Yves (illus.) Andre Leblanc (text) The Red Piano Wilkin Farago, 2009 unpaged $27.99 ISBN 9780980607017 SCIS 1428639

The colours of the front cover showing a sad girl walking with her head down against a dark red sky creates a sombre mood for the story. Some scraps of paper floating in the sky with music printed on them creates an intriguing puzzle. What does it all mean? The title page gives the date 'China, 1975, one April evening' and includes some information about how educated young people at the time were being sent to 're-education camps' to 'eradicate elitism through manual labour'.

The young girl at the centre of this story leads a hard life in the camp as she tries to learn through 'labour and self criticism'. She manages however to persuade her far away mother to send her a piano. It is old and with broken strings but it is still a piano and the girl perseveres. Others help her with music to play by passing single pages of The Well Tempered Clavier around the camp. The girl starts her own music book by copying the music into little note books. Then one night she is discovered by the guards and her piano destroyed. Life becomes even harder. After the death of Mao the camp closes and the girl is the last to leave.

This is a true story and to know what happened to the girl read the dedication at the front of the book by Zhu Xiao-Mei, a virtuoso pianist. Also included is some historical information about the Cultural Revolution and a web site. This is a moving story made more powerful by the striking illustrations in shades of black, sepia, cream and bold slashes of red with strong Asian influences throughout the art work. Overall, a book to evoke strong emotion. Highly recommended.

[A] An outstanding book of its kind as recommended by the reviewer