February 11, 2013
The Nazis killed more than one million Jewish children and teenagers; Jack (Yanek) Gruener, who was 10 when Krakow, Poland, fell, was a rare survivor. “Survive,” however, hardly seems adequate to describe what unfolds in these pages. Having lost his parents and close relatives just as he entered adolescence (Yanek has a secret bar mitzvah in a basement of the Krakow ghetto), the boy is totally alone as his life becomes a roll-call of nightmares: Trzebinia, Bir-kenau (where his arm is tattooed with the
number in the book’s title), Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen. Yanek is finally liberated at age 16, when American soldiers arrive at Dachau. Gratz (Fantasy Baseball) has fictionalized some aspects of Gruener’s life to “paint a fuller and more representative picture of the Holocaust as a whole,” and this determination to be exhaustively inclusive, along with lapses into History Channel–like prose, threatens to overwhelm the story. But more often, Gratz ably conveys Yanek’s incredulity (“Not long ago, all these half-dead creatures around me had been people”), fatalism, yearning, and determination in the face of the unimaginable. Ages 10–14. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary.
January 15, 2013
If Anne Frank had been a boy, this is the story her male counterpart might have told. At least, the very beginning of this historical novel reads as such. It is 1939 and Yanek Gruener is a 10-year old Jew in Krakow when the Nazis invade Poland. His family is forced to live with multiple other families in a tiny apartment as his beloved neighborhood of Podgorze changes from haven to ghetto in a matter of weeks. Readers will be quickly drawn into this first-person account of dwindling freedoms, daily humiliations and heart-wrenching separations from loved ones. Yet as the story darkens, it begs the age-old question of when and how to introduce children to the extremes of human brutality. Based on the true story of the life of Jack Gruener, who remarkably survived not just one, but 10 different concentration camps, this is an extraordinary, memorable and hopeful saga told in unflinching prose. While Gratz's words and early images are geared for young people, and are less gory than some accounts, Yanek's later experiences bear a closer resemblance to Elie Wiesel's Night than more middle-grade offerings, such as Lois Lowry's Number the Stars. It may well support classroom work with adult review first. A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)
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June 1, 2013
Gr 6-10-"If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn't have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o'clock every night." Yanek Gruener was 10 years old when the German army invaded Poland in 1939 and trapped his family inside the walls of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. Over the course of World War II, he saw his parents deported by the Nazis and survived 10 different concentration camps. Through Gratz's spare, persistent prose, the story of the boy's early life unfolds with the urgency and directness necessary for survivor stories. While some liberties have been taken, with the permission of Gruener and his wife, Ruth, also a survivor, the experiences and images come directly from the Grueners' collective memories of the war. An author's note provides further biographical information. A powerful story, well told.-Sara Saxton, Tuzzy Consortium Library, Barrow, AK
Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 15, 2013
Grades 5-8 When Hitler's army entered and occupied his native Krakw, 10-year-old Yanek knew his life might change, but he had no idea of the horror that lay ahead. His remarkable survival story begins with a dramatic, emotional punch and then chronicles such moments as his secretive bar mitzvah in a warehouse basement, the systematic round up of Jews, and his deportation to the Plaszow concentration camp, the first of 10 camps he would suffer but survive. He recalls encounters with such Nazi figures as the sadistic Amon Goeth and describes acts of wanton, viscious brutality. In an appended note, Gratz explains that the novel is based on actual events in survivor Jack Gruener's life but he has taken liberties with some times and events to provide a better overview. The account includes basic historical information including essential aspects of WWII. A map would have been helpful, but this essentially true story is a good starting point for students unfamiliar with the Holocaust. Pair it with Doreen Rappaport's Beyond Courage (2012) and Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2013
A fictionalization of a true story, this Holocaust narrative follows Yanek Gruener from his childhood in the Krakow ghetto through a brutal adolescence struggling to survive ten different concentration camps. The unimaginable horrors Yanek faces are portrayed in spare but unflinching detail. Occasional transcendent moments of beauty, nobility, or kindness sustain Yanek and readers alike.
(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)