...read the experience of young girl falling in love with ...

The wrong boy
by Suzy Zail

Published:  Newtown, N.S.W. : Black Dog, 2012.  256 pages
Reading Appeal:  Young Adult

Can you image finding some-one to love in a world ravaged by hatred and war?  Is this a love story...

       Coming-of-age                                                           Character-driven
The novel is fiction but is rooted in history.  It is the story of a young Jewish girl, aged 15, who is sent to Auschwitz with her family. Her name is Hanna and she is a talented pianist.
                                                          Love story
Hanna is desperate to live, as she daily witnesses the madness and death of those living in the concentration camp.  She sees an opportunity to survive through her music, by playing the piano to the camp commandant. Hanna meets the commandant's handsome son Karl and falls in love with the wrong boy.  The wrong boy is Karl, a German...
      Moving                                                                             Memorable
Interesting titbit:  Suzy Zail, the author, is the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor.
...this story is steeped in history and true romance...you won't be able to put this down...

Mandurah Libraries

...read this novel and time travel to a reading adventure in Poland, 1939...

Yellow star
by Jennifer Roy

Published:  London : Frances Lincoln Children's, 2009
Reading Appeal:  Young Adult

The facts behind the title of this novel:  During World War II, from 1939 to 1945, the Nazis forced the Jewish population to wear a yellow star on their clothing to indicate to everyone they were Jewish.
       Thought-provoking                         Moving                                        Memorable
This is a fictionalised true story based on factual information about the life of Sylvia Perlmutter.  After the war Syliva moved to the United States, married and after a number of years recounted her story to her neice, the author Jennifer Roy.

This is her story...in 1939 the Germans invaded the town of Lodz, Poland, and moved the Jewish population into a small part of the city called a ghetto. As the war progressed, 270,000 people were forced to settle in the ghetto under impossible conditions.

At the end of the war, there were about 800 survivors. Of those who survived, only twelve were children. This is the story of one of the twelve.
                                        First-person narrative                Courageous
Sylvia entered the ghetto when she was 4 years old and was liberated when she was 10 years, surviving the ordeal for almost six years.

...you have to read this to experience the courageous spirit of survival in one so young...

Jennifer Roy