Virtual Author Visit: Peter Sis

Join us for a conversation with celebrated author and illustrator Peter Sis. An exhibit showing Peter Sis’ works-in-progress will be held simultaneously in Putnam Valley Library’s Community Room.

The recipient of numerous awards, Peter Sis is, among other things, a seven-time winner of The New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year and a three times Caldecott Honoree. He is the first children’s book illustrator to win the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

Peter Sis’ newest book, Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued, tells the story of Nicky (Nicholas Winston), a quiet Englishman who, in December 1938, cancelled his vacation to go to Prague, where he ultimately organized the transportation of almost 700 children to safety. He never told anyone, until 50 years later, his wife discovered his records, kept in boxes in the attic.

Peter Sís weaves Nicky’s experiences and the story of one of the children he saved, Vera Gissing. “The story unfolds on parallel tracks, beginning, for both Nicky and Vera — an unusual and exquisite narrative choice — in childhood. Born into different worlds, they intersect briefly at one crucial moment in time, then split apart before coming together again at the end” (Jennifer Krauss, The New York Times).