The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

The Rebel Girls of Rome by Jordyn Taylor Harper (imprint of HarperCollins), 2025 Category: Amy Brook Cohen Reviewer: Young Adult   Buy at Bookshop.org   In The Rebel Girls of Rome , Taylor has written an epic, important and moving story. The story is told from the perspective of two characters: Lilah and Bruna. Lilah is a Jewish American college student who travels to Italy with her grandfather, Raffa (a Holocaust survivor with a tremendous amount of survivor’s guilt), looking for answers after receiving an intriguing email. Lilah and her grandfather are grieving after having recently lost Lilah’s mother to cancer, and a purpose-filled trip to Italy comes at an opportune time. Lilah and Raffa have no idea just how important and transformative this trip to Italy will be. Their visit to Rome leads them to uncover answers to questions about their family history, which will change their lives forever. The second perspective offered is that of Bruna - Lilah’s great aunt, and Raffa’...

Threat of the Spider (The Web of the Spider series) by Michael P. Spradlin Margaret K. McElderry Books (imprint of Simon & Schuster), 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Judith S. Greenblatt   Buy at Bookshop.org   Germany, 1930. Twelve year old Ansel’s father has gone missing. No help will be had from the police, as his father was fighting for a free press in Germany. It’s up to Ansel and his friends. Ansel applies what he has learned from reading his favorite books, the “Dirk Goodly, Boy Detective” novels. First considering possible kidnappers, Ansel focuses on Hans and his friends in his town’s Hitler Youth chapter. Ansel, who is quick to speak up against what he sees as wrong, and who is smart and funny, has been Hans’s enemy for a long time. Enmity between the two boys grew as Hans became more arrogant and even more of a bully. Can Ansel be right? Threat of the Spider  is a fast paced and compelling story: readers will want to know what happened to Ansel’s fath...

How the Ghost Army Hoodwinked Hitler: The Story of American Artistry and Deception in World War II by Rebecca Siegel Peachtree, 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacey Rattner   Buy at Bookshop.org   Before reading this book, if you had asked me about the Ghost Army I would have looked at you quizzically. Now I am grateful that I am educated and that so many young people will have the opportunity to become educated as well. As evidenced by the author’s extensive bibliography, a substantial amount of research went into writing this narrative nonfiction middle grade, which is greatly appreciated. In January 1944, a United States army unit of deception was created with a diverse group of creative, smart and talented soldiers. The secret Ghost Army was made up of not only visual artists, fashion enthusiasts, film and theatre set designers, but also coal miners and bartenders and everyone in between. The Ghost Army used their talents to distract the Germans with deception oper...

The Daughter of Auschwitz: The Girl Who Lived to Tell Her Story by Tova Friedman Quill Tree Books (imprint of HarperCollins), 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Merle Eisman Carrus   Buy at Bookshop.org   Tova Friedman was four years old when her family was moved to a Jewish Ghetto in Poland and just six when they were forced into a cattle car bound for Auschwitz concentration camp. Tova is one of the youngest survivors of the horrendous death camp. As time passes and the survivors of the Holocaust atrocities are fewer and fewer, Tova feels it is her obligation to tell her story. She must keep sharing her experiences so that the world will not forget what happened in World War II Germany and Poland.   Tova tells the story from the perspective of a young girl of twelve talking to a classmate. This makes the story easier for young readers to understand and relate to the details. We meet Tova when she comes to New York City and is starting her new life in America. It...

Can Posters Kill? Antisemitic Propaganda and World War II by Jerry Faivish with Kathryn Cole Second Story Press, 2025 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Emily Roth   Buy at Bookshop.org Can Posters Kill? Antisemitic Propaganda and World War II masterfully evaluates the danger of propaganda and how it was used during the Holocaust. In Faivish’s introduction, he explains why, as the child of two Holocaust survivors, he decided to begin collecting propaganda posters. Although the posters are painful to look at, Faivish feels that they should be viewed as a warning for the future. This slim but powerful book examines thirty-eight posters created between 1933 and 1945, divided into sections before, during, and after WWII. It is well-organized and easy to read, with each two-page spread displaying a poster on the left and a paragraph of text explaining it on the right. Although a large percentage of these posters were created by Hitler’s Ministry of Propaganda, as the war went on and the r...

One Day: A True Story of Survival in the Holocaust by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Benjamin Phillips Candlewick Studio, 2025 Category: Picture Books (sophisticated picture book for mature readers) Reviewer: Jeanette Brod   Buy at Bookshop.org The picture book One Day uses its title to propel the reader on a journey through the brutality and unexpected humanity found in the experiences of French Jews during the Holocaust. The theme was chosen for acclaimed children’s literature author and authority Michael Rosen as part of the Holocaust Memorial Commemoration in 2022. He tells the story of a father and son through the voice of Eugene Handschuh, the son. The author’s family has a second-hand connection to the story of the Handschuh family. In the Author’s Note, Michael Rosen admits to taking some artistic license with the protagonist’s interviews and book. The story takes place roughly over the course of one year, from late 1942 to late 1943. Amazingly, the story is circular. The ...

The House on the Canal: The Story of the House That Hid Anne Frank by Thomas Harding, illustrated by Britta Teckentrup Candlewick Press, 2025 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld   Buy at Bookshop.org I write this review having visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam not even a month ago, for the first time since I was in my 20s. And also, as the author of a sometimes-loved, sometimes-criticized (not to worry, some of the criticizers are still good friends!) story of Anne Frank from the perspective of the horse chestnut tree in the courtyard behind the secret annex. In this beautiful volume, Thomas Harding and illustrator Britta Teckentrup show off a dazzling amount of research, deft and purposefully detached writing, and glorious artwork as they trace the course of 263 Prinsengracht (in whose Annex hid Anne Frank and others from Nazi persecutions, with a terrible outcome) from before it was built right through to today, where people "learn about the girl with the ...

The Center of the Earth by Darlene P. Campos Blue Handle Publishing, 2025 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Merle Eisman Carrus   Buy at Bookshop.org The plot for The Center of the Earth is based on real life accounts by Holocaust survivors. Their experiences are embedded in the characters in this novel. Meet Dahlia Aviles, twelve years old, a courageous and compassionate young lady, who has moved to Berlin with her parents. Originally from Ecuador, Herr Aviles is a diplomat who is working on assignment in Germany. The year is 1938. Living next door is Rabbi and Frau Rubenstein and their nephew Werner, and the families become friends. As the pressure on Jews increases, Werner’s father and Herr Aviles discuss the future. When the Aviles are recalled to Ecuador, they have a plan in place to bring Werner with them. They draw up false papers and bring him home with them. They concoct a plausible story about Werner being an orphan and Frau Aviles being his nanny, bringing him home with...

Interrupted Lives: Nine Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust by Amanda Friedman and Kelley Szany Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rochelle Newman-Carrasco   Buy at Bookshop.org This book is an inspiring collection of autobiographical stories developed using insightful interviews. A note from the authors even before the opening page speaks to a powerful purpose: “For all the survivors. Thank you for your strength, courage, and resilience, reminding us of the need to remember the past in order to transform the future.” The nine stories also remind us that it won’t be long before hearing directly from survivors, in their own words, is a thing of the past. Authors Amanda Friedeman and Kelley Szany bring their expertise as Holocaust educators to this powerful work as they frame each story with an optimistic life lesson of relevance to the interviewee. These include: "Try to be Optimistic In Life," "Learn fr...

The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man's Journey Across Wartime Europe written and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz Farrar Straus Giroux, 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Judy Ehrenstein   Buy at Bookshop.org Employing a conversational, first-person narrative, the late author and illustrator Uri Shulevitz writes in the voice of his uncle, Henri, whom he met after both survived World War II. Born Yehiel Szulewicz in early 20th century Poland, Szulewicz showed early on that he was curious about the world beyond his Polish village and wouldn’t let obstacles get in his way of seeking adventure. Striking out from home at 15 ½ years old, thinking he would walk to the Holy Land, he traveled through Poland, much of central and southern Europe, eventually landing in Spain and joining the fight against Franco, all the while either staying with fellow Jews and earning small amounts of money to help him get by, or sleeping outside, “with the sky as my blanket”. When money or official papers were...

Fighter in the Woods:The True Story of a Jewish Girl Who Joined the Partisans in World War ll by Joshua M. Greene Scholastic Focus, 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jeanette Brod   Buy at Bookshop.org The book begins with a dedication to the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust. That’s followed by a dramatic vignette of our heroine in the midst of a partisan raid on a pile of Nazi weapons. The reader catches their breath and is then abruptly transported to the beginning of the story in a small town in Poland on June 22, 1941. The date is significant because it marks the beginning of the German attack on the Soviets. We don’t return to the partisan raid until Chapter 16, when the reader is almost at the end of the book. Fighter in the Woods is the biography of Celia Kassow: how she flees boarding school to rejoin the family, how she joins her family in hiding and in ghettos, how she is hidden in a barn, how she connects with her brothers in the Resistance, and ho...

Max in the Land of Lies: A Tale of World War II by Adam Gidwitz Dutton Books for Young Readers (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Kathryn Hall   Buy at Bookshop.org   Max in the Land of Lies is a sequel to Max in the House of Spies and begins in 1940 with Max just outside Berlin, after a parachute drop which left his adult supervisor dead. Max has dybbuk and kobold companions, one on each shoulder, invisible and inaudible to all but Max. They comment, give comic or historical perspective and advice, and sometimes even help. Max is a spy with an official mission, but his secret mission is to find the parents who had sent him to England for safety while they remained in Berlin. What follows is exciting, suspenseful, sad, frightening, heartwarming, and funny. The end is realistic and satisfying. Many of the characters were real people, and the historical accuracy is impressive in a work of fantasy fiction. Ethical dilemmas are explored, and...

Song of a Blackbird by Maria Van Lieshout First Second, 2025 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Emily Roth   Buy at Bookshop.org   Told through two distinct storylines, Song of a Blackbird proves that there are endless unique stories to tell about the Holocaust. In 1943, a young student named Emma agrees to join the Dutch resistance movement to help save Jewish children, and soon discovers that her artistic abilities could be key to saving numerous lives – despite endangering her own. Meanwhile, in 2011, Annick’s determination to help her beloved grandmother find a bone marrow donor leads her to discover a startling family secret, and join an artistic revolution of her own. A blackbird symbolizing hope and strength in difficult circumstances soars back and forth between the two stories, connecting them in an unexpected way. Although the stories here are fiction, they are inspired by real people and events. The art in this graphic novel is striking and unique. The illustrations, ...

Freedom's Game by Rosanne Tolin Reycraft Books, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Julie Ditton Buy at Bookshop.org During World War II, hundreds of Jewish children were hidden in Paris orphanages and schools by the French resistance, and eventually smuggled to safety in Switzerland. Tolin tells a well researched story about two such children. This well paced tale examines the lives and feelings of two children, Ziggy and Elke. Flashbacks take the reader to 1939 and tell how they managed to move from the safety of their homes and families before Hitler's rise, to one refuge after another. With two main characters, the author deftly manages to show the contrasting feelings of realistic pessimism and the hope that keeps these children going. Ziggy is suspicious of the new blonde haired gym teacher Georges Loinger. He claims to be a member of the resistance, but Ziggy wonders if he isn't really a German spy. His friend Elke has faith in Georges and clings to hope that the m...

When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary by Alice Hoffman Scholastic, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org Alice Hoffman brings her trademark magical realism to her version of Anne Frank’s life. The book opens with a fairytale-like prologue which sets the tone, stating “Once there were two sisters. One was beautiful and well-behaved and one saw the future and stepped inside it.” That magical realism continues throughout the book with recurring motifs of black moths, magpies, and rabbits representing the Jews, and wolves representing the Nazis. The main action of the novel begins on “the day everything changed.” Immediately the reader’s curiosity is piqued: which day - other than the day when the Franks went into hiding and the day they were betrayed - could have been the one that everything changed? It turns out that it was the day that Nazi Germany began bombing The Netherlands. Hoffman could have begun the book earlier, but begi...

Hiding from the Nazis in Plain Sight: A Graphic Novel Biography of Zhanna and Frina Arshanskaya by Lydia Lukidis, illustrated by Aleksandar Sotirovski Capstone Press, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jeanette Brod   Buy at Bookshop.org There are as many Holocaust stories of survival as there are survivors. We tell stories of the camps, the Holocaust, by bullets, hidden children, and now Hiding from the Nazis in Plain Sight . This true story is told in a very concise graphic novel. There are two sisters who are musical prodigies and somehow escape the 1941 roundup of Jews in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Taken in by the families of schoolmates, the sisters assume false identities as orphans. In the orphanage, they find refuge in their music. Their piano playing wafts through open windows and despite their efforts to keep a low profile, their artistry propels them into the spotlight. They are offered musical scholarships and invited to perform for the occupying German soldiers. In 1945, wh...

Safiyyah's War by Hiba Noor Khan Alida (imprint of HarperCollins), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer:  Stacey Rattner Buy at Bookshop.org War has come to Paris and 11 year old Safiyyah is navigating her life now that her best friend has fled to the country, her older cousin has joined the army, and Nazi soldiers are roaming the streets. When Safiyyah and her little cousin wonder if they will leave too, her father tells her that they will remain in Paris, living at their mosque. “It is our responsibility to our community. The congregation, as well as our neighbors of all faiths, need us, and in difficult times it’s more important than ever that we stick together.” And that is exactly what they do–stick together for each other, all faiths, including Jewish. Safiyyah’s family become critical players in the Resistance. Her father explains why. “How could we hope to sleep at night if we sat back and allowed the oppression of our neighbors, our brothers and sisters in humanity…?” This...

Violin of Hope by Ella Schwartz, illustrated by Juliana Oakley Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Doreen Robinson Buy at Bookshop.org Violin of Hope tells the story of a Jewish family - Mama, Papa, and young children Itzik and Feiga. At night, Papa takes the violin, which hangs on a special hook, and plays beautiful music. Sometimes the music makes the children laugh and dance, sometimes the music makes them melancholy. When Itzik tries to play it, the sound is shrill, but Papa encourages him to practice. One night, before Shabbos, Papa plays and Mama sings along in Yiddish, but a pounding on the door interrupts the family’s joy. As the children hide behind Papa and Mama, a Nazi soldier snatches the violin. It’s tossed into a truck filled with pillaged items from Jewish homes. The violin is dumped into a damp cellar where it waits, in silence. Years pass, until one day, light pours into the cellar and a luthier retrieves the...

Two Pieces of Chocolate by Kathy Kacer, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard Second Story Press, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karen Shakman Buy at Bookshop.org Two Pieces of Chocolate tells the story of an act of kindness between a woman and a child in Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp at the end of the Holocaust. The story is ultimately one of survival and hope, despite the desperate circumstances of the characters. The author does not shy away from describing the conditions of the camp, including powerful sensory details, such as the smell of “rotting eggs and bad feet and human sweat”, and the sight of humans “stumbling past like sleepwalkers.” Thus, the author paints a picture of a dark time in history without sugar coating the circumstances. However, the story conveys how people, in the face of such inhumanity, may act with selflessness, as does the child when she encounters a fellow prisoner, late in pregnancy and terribly weak. This act of kindness is at the center of the ...

Friends to the Rescue by Ellen Schwartz, illustrated by Alison Mutton Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Lisa Trank Buy at Bookshop.org In  Friends to the Rescue , a poignant illustrated novel, the story unfolds in the aftermath of the devastating 2009 earthquake that ravaged the Italian town of Fossa. Young Luca, orphaned by a car accident, lives with his grandfather, Roberto, when the disaster strikes. Their trauma is compounded by the town's collective grief. The early chapters introduce Antonio, Luca's braver best friend, and portray the community's unwavering resilience as they come together to aid the injured and rescue the trapped. A turning point arrives with the discovery of a beloved townswoman's body. This prompts a flashback to 1943, when Nazi Germany occupied Italy. Roberto, then a young man, witnesses the persecution of Italian Jews. His family risks their lives to harbor the Rosettis, including Sara,...