A different look at the Holocaust

I always learn something when reading historical fiction, and Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer was no exception.  Based on the childhood lives of the author's father and aunt during World War II, the story takes place in France.  Gustave and his parents are Jewish and living in Paris, but growing discrimination causes them to flee to a small village, where they think they'll be safe.  However, Germany continues their invasion, and soon the line between occupied and unoccupied France is very, very close.  As the pace of the book picks up, so do the sophistication of Gustave's concerns; early in the story, he has to decide which toy to take when they leave Paris, but later in the book he's faced with a life-or-death decision while helping to sneak relatives across the demarcation line.  (The title refers to the black radishes which Gustave and his father hope to use to bribe some of the German guards.)  A captivating read.

Absolutely unthinkable

I was so caught up in Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy that I read it in one day.  In 1939 Lodz, Poland, was invaded by the Germans, and all of the Jews were forced to move to a certain part of the city, the ghetto.  Over the years, more than a quarter of a million people were sent to the ghetto, but when it was liberated in 1945, there were only about 800 survivors, twelve of whom were children.  This story is told in free verse, and it's based on the the actual survival story of Sylvia, one of those children and the aunt of the author.  The horrific sights and sounds, the terror of being sent to the trains, the fear and hope...told through the voice of a child was mesmerizing.