Annemarie Johansen is a 10-year-old girl growing up in Denmark during WWII. Soldiers occupy every street corner and everyone does his or her best not to draw attention to themselves. Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen, is a Jew. One night, Annemarie’s family hides Ellen from soldiers who are looking for Jews. How far is the family […]
Jan and Antonina Żabiński were the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo when Germany invaded Poland. Between the bombing, Nazi cruelty, and the Nazi desire to keep all of the rare animals for themselves, there quickly wasn’t much of a zoo to keep. But Jan was an ingenious thinker and he came up with various ideas […]
Rita Lurie is a Holocaust survivor. Her story is remarkably similar to Anne Frank’s. She hid in an attic in Poland for two years at the very end of WWII. Her family’s hiding place was nowhere near as carefully-planned as the Frank family’s though. They fled Nazi soldiers in the night and eventually found a […]
Emmett Conn is 92 years old and he has started having seizures and disturbing dreams/flashbacks. His early years are a mystery to him anyway. He awoke in a British hospital in WWI, a Turkish soldier mistakenly picked up after he was severely wounded. That’s as far back as he can remember. But now in his […]
In Annexed, author Sharon Dogar imagines what life in the Annex with Anne Frank must have been like for young Peter. We know all about Anne’s thoughts and feelings, but surely Peter needs a chance to tell his side of things too. The novel begins as Peter is dying and looking back on his life, […]
Any kind of synopsis feels extremely redundant, but I’ll write one anyway. Anne Frank is a young Jewish girl in hiding in Amsterdam during WWII. I don’t know how I made it to be 31 years old without reading The Diary of Anne Frank. I’m glad I finally got to it though. I think Anne’s […]
Honestly, I can’t help but feel that for me to sit in judgment of a memoir of the Holocaust would be terribly presumptuous. We can’t ever forget the Holocaust, and any work that reminds us of what happened is important and should be read as widely as possible. The style is a little sparse for […]
5 Stars. Beautiful. I opened this novel, already in love with the cover, and fell in love with the writing contained within. It’s not a beauty that keeps you at arm’s distance. It’s a beauty that seductively whispers, “Come closer. Read what I have to say. See what I’m showing you.” And then it […]
Most of you have probably already read The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, but it’s my very, very favorite book right now and has been for a while. Liesel Meminger is a ten-year-old girl living in Nazi Germany and being sent to live with foster parents when her younger brother dies. This is the first […]