Latest "good read!"

Every other year I do Diary of Anne Frank with my students. I can't do it every year because my classes are mixed grades, so I have to cycle through students before I can repeat. The group this year is not responding to the diary itself as well as the class did two years ago, so I have had to use a lot of supplemental materials.

They are interested in and fascinated by the Holocaust - I am always amazed at how they don't know anything about it - that fact alone disturbs me.

So I have been reading a number of other Holocaust stories, and this collection looks like a winner - as in the kids are relating to it. The book is a collection of 8 stories of real Jewish children who overcame some horrific odds to survive the brutality of Hitler. They are all Polish, and apparently they never spoke about their backgrounds until they were well into adulthood.

One woman had never spoken of it at all, but once the Civil Rights movement began, she felt she had to speak up, since the atrocities suffered by blacks reminded her of the conditions she thought she had left far behind in Poland. (Nearly all of them had emigrated to the U.S. after the war.)

Another aspect is the simplicity of the reading - the stories are told very directly, with little description - just bold facts. It works on many levels. It is very effective at grabbing the attention of my kids, the prose is easy for them to read, but it is not simplistic, just simple.

It was a quick read - and each chapter is a story in itself, so it is an easy book to put down. If you have a teenage reader who wants to find out information about the Holocaust, you could read this with them quite effectively.