Book picks similar to
Friedrich by Hans Peter Richter
historical-fiction
fiction
holocaust
young-adult
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque - 1929
With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.
The Snow Goose
Paul Gallico - 1941
Gallico's most famous story, The Snow Goose, is set in the wild, desolate Essex marshes and is an intense and moving tale about the relationship between a hunchback and a young girl. The Small Miracle is a contemporary fable about a young boy's love for his dangerously ill donkey.
Journey to America
Sonia Levitin - 1970
Suddenly, there were more and more restrictions for the Jews: yellow stars they had to wear, schools they could not attend, things they were forbidden to do. The Nazis were in power. And Lisa Platt was scared.Her father knew they had to escape, and he left for America in the middle of the night. He promised to send for Lisa, her mother, and her two sisters when there was enough money. Until then, they were to live in Switzerland. And so they did, waiting, in hardship none of them could ever have imagined.
Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt - 1975
When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less a blessing that it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.
The Final Journey
Gudrun Pausewang - 1992
She is on a train with no seats, no lights, no sanitary facilities. Her parents and her grandmother are missing, and Alice doesn't know where she is going. Maybe she will get to play outside again, maybe she will see her parents. But as the train rolls on, Alice begins to realize that just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, they do. "No reader will be immune to the plight of these people, powerless in the face of overwhelming evil."-- "Kirkus Reviews"
Prisoner B-3087
Alan Gratz - 2013
At any cost.10 concentration camps.10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly.It's something no one could imagine surviving.But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face.As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner -- his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087.He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror. He just barely escapes death, only to confront it again seconds later.Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will -- and, most of all, his sense of who he really is inside?Based on an astonishing true story.
Johnny Tremain
Esther Forbes - 1943
But even more gripping than living through the drama of Revolutionary Boston is the important discovery Johnny makes in his own life.
Corpus Delicti. Ein Prozess
Juli Zeh - 2009
Everyone must submit medical data and sleep records to the authorities on a monthly basis, and regular exercise is mandatory. Mia is young and beautiful, a successful scientist who is outwardly obedient but with an intellect that marks her as subversive. Convinced that her brother has been wrongfully convicted of a terrible crime, Mia comes up against the full force of a regime determined to control every aspect of its citizens' lives.The Method, set in the middle of the twenty-first century, deals with pressing questions: to what extent can the state curtail the rights of the individual? And does the individual have a right to resist? Juli Zeh has written a thrilling and visionary book about our future, and our present.
Fatelessness
Imre Kertész - 1975
He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn’t particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, “You are no Jew.” In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider.The genius of Imre Kertesz’s unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg’s dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he witnesses–or pretending that what he witnesses makes sense. Haunting, evocative, and all the more horrifying for its rigorous avoidance of sentiment, Fatelessness is a masterpiece in the traditions of Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski.
My Brother Sam Is Dead
James Lincoln Collier - 1974
Includes exclusive bonus content!All his life, Tim Meeker has looked up to his brother Sam. Sam's smart and brave -- and is now a part of the American Revolution. Not everyone in town wants to be a part of the rebellion. Most are supporters of the British -- including Tim and Sam's father.War is raging and Tim knows he'll have to make a choice -- between the Revolutionaries and the Redcoats . . . and between his brother and his father.
Detectives in Togas
Henry Winterfeld - 1956
. . thanks to some help from their cranky teacher, a little bit of logic, and a lot of amusing misadventure.Yes, Rufus wrote CAIUS IS A DUMBBELL on his tablet at school, but no, he did not break into the schoolroom, did not tie up his teacher, and certainly did not paint his slur about Caius on the Temple of Minerva (even if it is in Rufus's own handwriting). Rufus is doomed unless his six classmates can find out who is really responsible. Every hour seems to bring a new, confusing clue . . . until the boys finally stumble upon someone who is not what he appears to be.
The Children of the New Forest
Frederick Marryat - 1847
It is set in the time of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth. The story follows the fortunes of the four Beverley children who are orphaned during the war, and hide from their Roundhead oppressors in the shelter of the New Forest where they learn to live off the land.
Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation
Yoshiko Uchida - 1971
Uprooted from her home and shipped with thousands of West Coast Japanese Americans to a desert concentration camp called Topaz, Yuki and her family face new hardships daily.
Flambards
K.M. Peyton - 1967
Christina discovers a passion for horses and riding but finds herself part of a strange household, divided by emotional undercurrents and cruelty.
The Breadwinner
Deborah Ellis - 2000
Barred from attending school, shopping at the market, or even playing in the streets of Kabul, the heroine of Deborah Ellis's engrossing children's novel The Breadwinner is trapped inside her family's one-room home. That is, until the Taliban hauls away her father and Parvana realizes that it's up to her to become the "breadwinner" and disguise herself as a boy to support her mother, two sisters, and baby brother. Set in the early years of the Taliban regime, this topical novel for middle readers explores the harsh realities of life for girls and women in modern-day Afghanistan. A political activist whose first book for children, Looking for X, dealt with poverty in Toronto, Ellis based The Breadwinner on the true-life stories of women in Afghan refugee camps. In the wily Parvana, Ellis creates a character to whom North American children will have no difficulty relating. The daughter of university-educated parents, Parvana is thoroughly westernized in her outlook and responses. A pint-sized version of Offred from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Parvana conceals her critique of the repressive Muslim state behind the veil of her chador. Although the dialogue is occasionally stilted and the ending disappointingly sketchy, The Breadwinner is essential reading for any child curious about ordinary Afghans. Like so many books and movies on the subject, it is also eerily prophetic. "Maybe someone should drop a big bomb on the country and start again," says a friend of Parvana's. "'They've tried that,' Parvana said, 'It only made things worse.'" (Ages 9 to 12) --Lisa Alward