Book picks similar to
So Young to Die: The Story of Hannah Senesh by Candice Ransom
biography
wwii
non-fiction
holocaust
Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World
Susan HoodSara Palacios - 2018
From the award-winning author of Ada’s Violin, Susan Hood, this is a poetic and visual picture book that celebrates persistent women throughout history. Among the powerful pairings: Caldecott Medalist Sophie Blackall takes on heroic World War II spies Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne; Selina Alko is matched with the brave Malala Yousafzai; New York Times bestselling illustrator Emily Winfield Martin is paired with the inventor of the controversial one-piece bathing suit, Annette Kellerman; and Shadra Strickland introduces America’s first known female firefighter, Molly Williams. While women make up over half of the U.S. population, they face discrimination, have less representation in government and other fields, and struggle every day for their human rights. It is more important now than ever to raise a generation of girls who, in the face of adversity, persevere. This book was written, illustrated, edited, and designed by women. Includes a foreword by a prominent female activist, an author’s note, a timeline, and additional resources. This book features: Selina Alko, Sophie Blackall, Lisa Brown, Hadley Hooper, Emily Winfield Martin, Oge Mora, Julie Morstad, Sara Palacios, LeUyen Pham, Erin Robinson, Isabel Roxas, Shadra Strickland, and Melissa Sweet.
The Girl in the Red Coat
Roma Ligocka - 2000
Fifty years later, Roma, an artist living in Germany, attended a screening of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and instantly knew that “the girl in the red coat”—the only splash of color in the film—was her. Thus began a harrowing journey into the past, as Roma Ligocka sought to reclaim her life and put together the pieces of a shattered childhood. The result is this remarkable memoir, a fifty-year chronicle of survival and its aftermath. With brutal honesty, Ligocka recollects a childhood at the heart of evil: the flashing black boots, the sudden executions, her mother weeping, her father vanished…then her own harrowing escape and the strange twists of fate that allowed her to live on into the haunted years after the war. Powerful, lyrical, and unique among Holocaust memoirs, The Girl in the Red Coat eloquently explores the power of evil to twist our lives long after we have survived it. It is a story for anyone who has ever known the darkness of an unbearable past—and searched for the courage to move forward into the light.
Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
Menachem Kaiser - 2021
Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." A surprise discovery — that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex — leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance — material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Donald Zochert - 1976
Wilder's unpublished memoirs to picture the people, places, and events that informed her ninety years and inspired her well-beloved Little House books
The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz: A True Story of World War II
Denis Avey - 2011
He was put to work every day in a German factory, where he labored alongside Jewish prisoners from a nearby camp called Auschwitz. The stories they told him were horrifying. Eventually Avey's curiosity, kind-heartedness, derring-do, and perhaps foolhardiness drove him to suggest--and remarkably manage--switching places with two of the Jewish prisoners in order to spend a couple of harrowing days and nights inside. Miraculously, he lived to tell about it.Surely deserving of its place alongside the great World War II stories, this is an incredible tale of generosity, courage, and, for one Jewish prisoner whom Denis was able to help, survival. Amazingly, breathtakingly, it is told here for the first time.
The Winged Watchman
Hilda van Stockum - 1962
Every element of occupied Holland is united in a story of courage and hope: a hidden Jewish child, an "underdiver," a downed RAF pilot, an imaginative, daring underground hero, and the small things of family life which surprisingly carry on in the midst of oppression. The Verhagen family, who live in the old windmill called the Winged Watchman, are a memorable set of individuals whose lives powerfully demonstrate the resilience of those who suffer but do not lose faith.
Dreams in the Golden Country: the Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl, New York City, 1903
Kathryn Lasky - 1998
New dreams and old traditions flourish and clash when a Jewish girl and her family emigrate from Russia to America.
Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine, France, 1136
Kristiana Gregory - 2002
Their mother died several years earlier, so their grandmother and ladies-in-waiting raise the girls. Eleanor is extremely intelligent and literate, having been carefully educated by royal tutors. Spinning bores her, as does weaving, sewing, and other housewifery skills expected of her. She would rather be a knight and ride off to war. In fact, in 1136, when her father is invited to help invade Normandy,
A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France
Caroline Moorehead - 2011
They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by World War II resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival—and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.
Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society
Adeline Yen Mah - 2004
Should anyone insult you, tell yourself this: I am a child of destiny who will unite East and West and change the world.After enduring abuse at the hands of her cruel stepmother, Chinese Cinderella (CC) seeks refuge at a martial-arts school and joins a secret dragon society.Under the guidance of Grandma Wu, CC is introduced to the exciting world of espionage as a part of the Chinese Resistance movement. And when CC and her new comrades take on a daring mission to rescue a crew of WWII American airmen, they prove that true bravery knows no age barrier.
T4
Ann Clare LeZotte - 2008
Paula Becker, thirteen years old and deaf, lives with her family in a rural German town. As rumors swirl of disabled children quietly disappearing, a priest comes to her family’s door with an offer to shield Paula from an uncertain fate. When the sanctuary he offers is fleeting, Paula needs to call upon all her strength to stay one step ahead of the Nazis.
Dora Bruder
Patrick Modiano - 1997
Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Dora Bruder, who had run away from her Catholic boarding school, the ad sets Modiano off on a quest to find out everything he can about Dora and why, at the height of German reprisals, she ran away on a bitterly cold day from the people hiding her. He finds only one other official mention of her name on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942. With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records, Modiano continues to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he discovers in official records and through remaining family members, becomes a meditation on the immense losses of the period—lost people, lost stories, and lost history. Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Nazi Occupation, and the paranoia of the Pétain regime as he tries to find connections to Dora. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result, a montage of creative and historical material, is Modiano's personal rumination on loss, both memoir and memorial.
The Berlin Boxing Club
Robert Sharenow - 2011
But the bullies at his school in Nazi-era Berlin, don't care that Karl has never been in a synagogue or that his family doesn't practice religion. Demoralized by attacks on a heritage he doesn't accept as his own, Karl longs to prove his worth.So when Max Schmeling, champion boxer and German national hero, makes a deal with Karl's father to give Karl boxing lessons, A skilled cartoonist, Karl has never had an interest in boxing, but now it seems like the perfect chance to reinvent himself.But when Nazi violence against Jews escalates, Karl must take on a new role: protector of his family. And as Max's fame forces him to associate with Hitler and other Nazi elites, Karl begins to wonder where his hero's sympathies truly lie. Can Karl balance his dream of boxing greatness with his obligation to keep his family out of harm's way?Includes an author's note and sources page detailing the factual inspirations behind the novel.Supports the Common Core State Standards.
Carrie's War
Nina Bawden - 1973
Carrie and Nick are billeted in Wales with old Mr Evans, who is so mean and cold, and his timid mouse of a sister, Lou, who suddenly starts having secrets. Their friend Albert is luckier, living in Druid's Bottom with warm-hearted Hepzibah Green and the strange Mister Johnny, who can talk to animals but not to human beings. Carrie and Nick visit him there whenever they can for Hepzibah makes life exciting and enticing with her stories and delicious cooking. Gradually they begin to feel more at ease in their war-time home, but then, in trying to heal the rift between Mr Evans and his estranged sister, and save Druid's Bottom, Carrie does a terrible thing which is to haunt her for years to come. Carrie revisits Wales as an adult and tells the story to her own children.
How They Croaked
Georgia Bragg - 2011
In fact, getting sick and dying can be a big, ugly mess-especially before the modern medical care that we all enjoy today. How They Croaked relays all the gory details of how nineteen world figures gave up the ghost. For example:It is believed that Henry VIII's remains exploded within his coffin while lying in state. Doctors "treated" George Washington by draining almost 80 ounces of blood before he finally kicked the bucket. Right before Beethoven wrote his last notes, doctors drilled a hole in his stomach without any pain medication.Readers will be interested well past the final curtain, and feel lucky to live in a world with painkillers, X-rays, soap, and 911.