Manon Gauthier lives in Montreal, Canada, where she works as a professional illustrator. A graphic designer by training, she decided to devote herself entirely to books for children in 2006. She likes mixing techniques and media. Her work has been recognized by the Governor General of Canada Awards and has won the Illustration Jeunesse Prize.
Marcel Marceau, Master of Mime, by Gloria Spielman, illustrated by
Manon Gauthier (Kar-Ben). I confess I have always been a
mime-mocker. Walking against the wind? Trapped in a box? Climbing a
ladder? Oh cripes, cut it out and say something! But I'm eating my
own words (silently! with invisible cutlery!) after reading this
gripping biography. At age 5, Marcel--the son of a kosher butcher
in Strasbourg, France--is determined to become a silent actor like
Charlie Chaplin. At 16, he joins the French Resistance to fight the
Nazis. He alters photos and forges ID cards to make other children
look too young to be sent to the camps and secretly leads groups of
Jewish children across the Swiss border to safety. After the war,
he becomes the artist he always wanted to be. The luminous pencil
and watercolor illustrations complement the text
beautifully.--Tablet -- "Magazine"
Little Marcel grows up in Strasbourg, on the border between France
and Germany, fascinated with the silent film star Charlie Chaplin.
He, too, wants to use only his gestures and the medium of silence
to make people laugh and cry. But Hitler intervenes when the boy is
16, and Marcel becomes part of the French Resistance, helping to
forge identification cards for Jewish children and even leading
small groups, dressed as boy scouts, to safety in Switzerland. At
the end of World War II, Marcel is able to study the ancient art of
mime--and for the next 60 years he performs around the world. This
whimsical biography, with its dark notes of oppression and war,
reminds readers of the power of dreams and the importance of
practice and persistence.--Washington Parent-- "Magazine"
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-- "Journal"
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