Poland

They Went Left

Sophie Rosen , , , ,

Hesse, Monica. They Went Left. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2020.
After surviving the horrors of being locked up in a concentration camp, eighteen-year-old Zofia travels back to her home in Poland in 1945 with the help of a Russian soldier. She hopes to be reunited with her younger brother, but he isn’t there.  So she sets off in the middle of the night to search for him, determined not to give up until she finds him. It is in a displaced-persons camp in Germany where she finally discovers the truth.
A young adult novel about love and loss and learning to live with memories, this novel is most highly recommended for mature readers 13 years old and up.

(Note: due the sexual references, some private schools and some parents may prefer to reserve this book for older readers.)

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The Cats in Krasinski Square

Sophie Rosen , ,

Hesse, Karen. The Cats in Krasinski Square. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2004. 
Inside the Wall of the Ghetto, and inside the cracks, dark corners, and openings in the rubble, are cats who’ve lost their owners. It is dangerous here. You cannot act Jewish. A girl and her sister, Mira, have almost no food. So one day, they decide to get their friends – who live beyond The Wall – to help them secretly smuggle bags of food into the Ghetto. But on the day the train is to come, they get news that the Gestapo knows of the train and the food! They are bringing their dogs. The girl has a slightly dangerous plan. She scurries over to the rubble and collects the cats in baskets. Then they all hurry over to the train station. The train comes, and the dogs are let loose. But what else is let loose? The cats! The dogs immediately lose interest in the train and begin chasing the poor cats! What chaos! A few minutes later, the girl and sister happily walk home in the night with bags of food. – Eishmeet in grade 6   

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The Button War

Sophie Rosen , , ,

Avi. The Button War. Somerville, Massachusetts. Candlewick Press, 2018.
Anything written by Avi is worth reading. Anything published by Candlewick is worth considering. And this World War I story is absolutely riveting: the animosities among a group of boys in Russian-occupied Poland during the summer of 1914 are revealed by a competition to collect military buttons. This intense 229-page novel is not for readers looking for a light-hearted read but rather for thoughtful readers – 11-years-old and up – who understand how fierce rivalry can lead to betrayal and violence.

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