Plot: a teenage girl, Hannah, is transported to 1942 Poland while celebrating Passover. The world is in chaos as World War II rages on, and she is caught in the middle of it. Ending up in a concentration camp with people she doesn't know in a time far in the past, Hannah learns the importance that remembering has for the Jewish.
Comments: I wasn't convinced I would like this book, and when I started it, I still didn't expect much. But the way this story is told and the things it shows you drew me in, and I closed the book with a new understanding of World War II. Jane Yolen skillfully tells the somber tale of Jews being rounded up and forcefully put into concentration camps. It felt like I was there, in the story, but I know I can never truly understand what they went through. The characters are easy to imagine and easy to relate to. You become attached to every one, and their pain is your pain. Simple language, easy to read.
The imagery Yolen uses to describe the happy village and the cruel concentration camp is simple, but colorful. The horror of the concentration camp is great enough that you don't need descriptive words or photos; plain facts and statements would have sufficed. I can only imagine what the camps were actually like, but I can get a glimpse of them in this story.
The plot is relatively simple, and the concept--though appalling--is easy to understand. The strength of the bonds between the young girls in this story is bittersweet, and the end is the same. I felt satisfied, yet sad, at the way things ended, and I thought it was very fitting and noble. The lesson this novel teaches us, the things it shows us, are things we need to know and need to remember. Never will we forget.
Rating: I rate this book a six and a half out of ten.
I have some great Holocaust literature if you're interested. Have you read "Maus"?
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