c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Books for children about the Holocaust were once hard to find. Not anymore. In the past few years, several outstanding children’s books have been published about that nightmare period. They introduce a difficult subject well _ with respect, dignity and hope.
Begin by reading “Hana’s Suitcase” (Whitman, $15.95) by Karen Levine. It is a powerful, poignant and carefully researched true story. Hana Brady was a Czech Jewish girl who died at Auschwitz and whose suitcase came to a children’s Holocaust education center in Tokyo.
The center’s young curator uncovers the owner’s story and gives her a personal face (for ages 10-14).
Follow with “Hidden Child” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18) by Isaac Millman, a book as moving as any I have read. The author writes about his life as a Jewish child hidden by Christians in occupied France. It took him more than 50 years to tell his story. His need to keep his parents’ memory alive finally wrenched this book from his pen, paintbrush and soul. Family photos interspersed with haunting paintings and beautiful writing make this a compelling read (ages 9-14).
The survival story of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz is told in a stunning collection of 36 embroidered panels that she hand-stitched, along with captions, about her life in Poland before and during the war. “Memories of Survival” (Hyperion, $15.99) is a picture book created by daughter Bernice Steinhardt to honor her mother’s memory. The detailed needlework is remarkable, as is Esther’s strength and courage (ages 10 and up).
The “Diary of Anne Frank” is part of our collective conscience. Now a new book, “Anne Frank” (Knopf, $17.95) by Josephine Poole and illustrated by Angela Barrett, brings her to life for younger children. Both the smooth narrative and skillful drawings capture Anne’s spirit and vitality. The sense of impending doom is foreshadowed in both art and text but is never sensationalized. It’s a memorable and worthy book (ages 8-12).
“Keeping the Promise: A Torah’s Journey” (Kar-Ben, $16.95) relates the inspiring journey of a tiny Torah scroll from a kind Dutch rabbi to a frightened bar mitzvah boy in Bergen-Belsen to the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, himself the child of a Holocaust survivor. The scroll was not recovered from the 2003 explosion of the Columbia. The spare, serious text by Tami Lehman-Wilzig and muted, soft drawings by Craig Orback create a lovely story of faith and hope (ages 6-9).
Marisabina Russo has crafted a fine picture book about her own family’s survival in “Always Remember Me: How One Family Survived World War II” (Atheneum, $16.95). When she is old enough to know, Rachel’s grandmother gently tells her about the Holocaust. The endpapers feature the author’s old family photos, the writing is understated, and the artwork is appropriately somber (ages 7-10).
“The Cats in Krasinski Square” (Scholastic, $16.95) by Karen Hesse, with paintings by Wendy Watson, gives young readers two child heroes. A young Jewish girl and her sister, “passing” as Polish, ingeniously trick the Nazis in order to smuggle food to their friends in the Warsaw ghetto. Poetic writing and arresting images make this a stirring story of bravery and triumph (ages 6-10).
When the Mauthausen concentration camp was liberated in 1945, the grateful inmates, one of whom was Simon Wiesenthal, presented a gift to the American soldiers. At great risk to themselves, the prisoners had made an American flag, but they added an extra row of stars because they didn’t know how many states there were. The American colonel in charge of the operation ordered that the flag be flown over the camp. “The Flag With Fifty-Six Stars” (Holiday House, $16.95) by Susan Goldman Rubin and illustrated by Bill Farnsworth tells this true story. The flag now hangs at the Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles (ages 8-12).
MO/PH/JL END ENGLEHART
(Kathy Englehart is a children’s librarian in Shaker Heights, Ohio. She wrote this article for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)
