The Horn Book Guide

INTERMEDIATE FICTION

Craddock, Sonia

Sleeping Boy

40 pp. | Atheneum | October, 1999 | Trade ISBN 0-689-81763-0 $$16.95

(4) 4-6 Illustrated by Leonid Gore. Allegory is ill served in this attempt to trace the story of twentieth-century Germany within the outlines of "Sleeping Beauty." Under a curse, a boy and his family sleep through the Second World War and the subsequent division of Berlin, only awakening when the Wall is torn down. The arch and exclamatory prose lacks the gravity demanded by the subject. Only the paintings in this picture book, by turn tender and threatening, do the theme justice.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2000