A Dream of Peace, collected by UNICEF

...We had to climb over dead bodies .", and a caption under a drawing of a small figure following a larger figure rushing from a burning house, with a bomb about to fall on their sandbox and swingset...

...39...

...drawings collected by UNICEF HarperCollins, $12 95, 76 pp Peggy Ellsberg When I Dream of Peace arrived by mail yesterday, my seven-year-old son studied the cover "These airplanes bombed a hospital1" he noticed...

...The drawings and writings in this beautifully produced volume document the particularly incomprehensible atrocities that are being inflicted, as a special military strategy, against the children of former Yugoslavia The little poems and captions written by child survivors are almost unbearably sad "The day they killed my house...

...And the hospital is on fire' Isn't that against the law9" Despite the values and opinions we constantly espouse, our son is a genteel connoisseur of GI Joe dolls and of the Eyewitness Dictionaries of Military Uniforms and Military History He knows what is and is not allowed under the rules of war But it has always seemed to me, who progressed right from Tmy Tears dolls to objecting to the Vietnam War, that everything about armed aggression ought to be illegal War and its practices always struck me as a simple series of incomprehensible atrocities and monumental lunacy...

...Many people are wounded— sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers", "I used to have a new tricycle, red and yellow with a bell...

...Mama, wait for me'" But the drawings surprised me with their power Produced by children aged six to fourteen, they are immediately recognizable as the blunt, simple representations of very young artists Almost every drawing is dominated by the color red fire and blood rule the design of war Tiny human figures surrounded by blossoms of blood and halos of flame are scattered against the flat, illogical, totalitarian landscape of terror and chaos Less expected than the primitive realities that a child's crayons can produce, however, is the emotional subtlety and precision of detail that most of these drawings reveal In eleven-year-old Ankica's watercolor titled "Mother and Child," produced with zen-hke economy and a few bold brushstrokes, the tiny infant's face, outlined in blood, is a profound study in pain and fear, the maternal face, a mere stick-figure's simple face, is washed with blue-green tears, her mouth a wide scream, her eyes huge with shock In ten-year-old Belma's "We Were Only Waiting for Candles," three children he in floating perspective, limbs flying from their bodies, fire and blood surrounding them like scarlet cotton It is striking in this picture how obvious it is that two of the children are still alive—and crying—but that one is already dead, her face reduced to a featureless blood stain These drawings result from the art therapy sessions conducted by UNICEF in an effort to address the children's traumas The book also contains a few pages of blackand-white photographs of the affected children, which are as moving as the drawings I have chosen not to see the movie Schindler's List, partly because at this moment in my life I do not want to flood myself with painful images that I can do nothing to heal And I was a bit anxious before opening / Dream of Peace that it would leave me feeling torn and hopeless But it did not The child-artists themselves continue to be filled with hope, they are already forgiving the future, filling each poem and picture with yearning for a better time After my son studied every drawing and read every word of the book, he was sober and quiet "What do you think the book means9" I asked him...

...It means that someone—or everyone—absolutely must help them," he said...