Thirteen-year-old Plato Jones comes to terms with his mixed heritage when he visits Greece and finds out about his Welsh grandfather, a World War II hero, and his Greek grandfather, who is rumored to have been a traitor.
The Real Plato Jones
World War II
Sacred Shadows
When her German hometown becomes part of Poland after World War I, Lene, a young German Jew, struggles to come to terms with the anti-Semitism and anti-German hatred that seems to be growing around her.
When the Soldiers Were Gone
After the German occupation of the Netherlands, Benjamin leaves the Christian family with whom he had been living and reunites with his real parents who returned from hiding.
After the War
“Didn’t the gas ovens finish you all off?” is the response that meets Ruth Mendenberg when she returns to her village in Poland after the liberation of Buchenwald at the end of World War II. Her entire family wiped out in the Holocaust, the fifteen-year-old girl has nowhere to go. Members of the underground organization Brichah find her, and she joins them in their dangerous quest to smuggle illegal immigrants to Palestine. Ruth risks her life to help lead a group of children on a daring journey over half a continent and across the sea to Eretz Israel, using secret routes and forged documents — and sheer force of will.
Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story
By the time WWII ended in Europe, the Blumenthal family–Marion, her brother Albert, and their parents–had lived in a succession of refugee, transit, and prison camps for more than six years, not only surviving but staying together. This memoir is written in spare, powerful prose that vividly depicts the endless degradation and humiliation suffered by the Holocaust’s innocent victims, as well as the unending horror of life in the camps.
But Can the Phoenix Sing?
Escaping the Warsaw Ghetto to a life of danger and freedom as a partisan in the forest of Parczew, fourteen-year-old Misha Edelman learns a harsh lesson about survival that parallels the story of the mythical phoenix.
Two Suns in the Sky
In 1944, an Upstate New York teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp, despite their parents’ conviction that they do not belong together.
Play to the Angel
In February 1938, in Vienna, twelve-year-old Greta Radky is devastated to learn that her mother plans to sell the family piano. Greta’s brother, a concert pianist, died the previous April, and her mother thinks of the piano as his. But Greta is an equally committed musician, and when she meets a mysterious piano teacher who agrees to work with her, she proves it. With his help the piano is saved, and inspired by his tiny angel doll, Greta practices furiously for her first recital. Then, on the day of the performance, the Nazis invade Austria. Suddenly Greta discovers her teacher’s secret and knows that his life is in danger. Having stood up to her mother, Greta must now confront the Nazis.
Escaping into the Night
Thirteen-year-old Halina Rudowski narrowly escapes the Polish ghetto and flees to the forest, where she is taken in by an encampment of Jews trying to survive World War II. Based on historical events, this gripping tale sheds light on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust: the underground forest encampments that saved several thousand Jews from the Nazis.
Sky: A True Story of Resistance During World War II
A former member of the underground Dutch resistance force against the Nazis recounts her two years of covert meetings, perilous deliveries, near-confrontations, and life sentencing while she was still a teenager.