BENNO AND THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS

Benno the cat has it pretty good, with a nice warm bed by the furnace of a Berlin apartment building, fresh milk every night, scraps from Shabbat dinners at the Adlers’ apartment and Sunday lunches with the Schmidts. Visiting Moshe’s butcher shop provides more nourishment, while the sunny window of Mitzi Stein’s fabric shop serves perfectly for afternoon naps. But one day things change, when men in brown shirts defile the neighborhood with a book-burning in the center of the street followed by the smashing of store windows, looting and destruction of certain apartments and stores. These terribly frightening events change not only Benno’s secure, happy cat existence but become known as Kristallnacht, the beginning of the Holocaust. Bisaillon’s combination of collage, drawings and digital montage create a Cubist backdrop for this darkly portrayed story told with minimal details that keep strictly to the cat’s level of understanding—it’s up to readers and their grown-ups to fill in the gaps, aided by an afterword and bibliography that provide background to the topic and grist for discussion. (Picture book. 7-9)