I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree: A Memoir of a Schindler's List Survivor


Laura Hillman - 2003
    Six weeks later he was sent home; ashes in an urn. Soon another letter arrived. "The Gestapo has notified your brothers and me that we are to be deported to the East--whatever that means." Hannelore knew: labor camps, starvation, beatings...How could Mama and her two younger brothers bear that? She made a decision: She would go home and be deported with her family. Despite the horrors she faced in eight labor and concentration camps, Hannelore met and fell in love with a Polish POW named Dick Hillman. Oskar Schindler was their one hope to survive. Schindler had a plan to take eleven hundred Jews to the safety of his new factory in Czechoslovakia. Incredibly both she and Dick were added to his list. But survival was not that simple. Weeks later Hannelore found herself, alone, outside the gates of Auschwitz, pushed toward the smoking crematoria. I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree is the remarkable true story of one young woman's nightmarish coming-of-age. But it is also a story about the surprising possibilities for hope and love in one of history's most brutal times.

Death March: The Survivors of Bataan


Donald Knox - 1981
    Photographs and maps.

The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom


Slavomir Rawicz - 1956
    The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.

Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely Through a Never-Ending War


Deborah Ellis - 2012
    By reading the story of eleven-year-old Parvana and her struggles living under the terror of the Taliban, young readers came to know the plight of children in Afghanistan.But what has happened to Afghanistan's children since the fall of the Taliban in 2001? In 2011, Deborah Ellis went to Kabul to find out. She interviewed children who spoke about their lives now. They are still living in a country torn apart by war. Violence and oppression still exist, particularly affecting the lives of girls, but the kids are weathering their lives with courage and optimism: "I was incredibly impressed by the sense of urgency these kids have -- needing to get as much education and life experience and fun as they can, because they never know when the boom is going to be lowered on them again."The two dozen or so children featured in the book range in age from ten to seventeen. Many are girls Deb met through projects funded by Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (www.cw4wafghan.ca), the organization that is supported by royalties from The Breadwinner Trilogy. Parvana’s Fund provides grants toward education projects for Afghan women and children, including schools, libraries and literacy programs.All royalties from the sale of Kids of Kabul will also go to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan.

White Rose


Kip Wilson - 2019
    Told as a novel in verse.

The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child


Francisco Jiménez - 1996
    As it moves from one labor camp to the next, the little family of four grows into ten. Impermanence and poverty define their lives. But with faith, hope, and back-breaking work, the family endures.

The Devil's Arithmetic


Jane Yolen - 1988
    But this year she will be mysteriously transported into the past. Only she knows the horrors that await.

This Is Your Time


Ruby Bridges - 2020
    This volume features photographs from the 1960s and from today, as well as jacket art from The Problem We All Live With, the 1964 painting by Norman Rockwell depicting Ruby’s walk to school.

A Diamond in the Desert


Kathryn Fitzmaurice - 2012
    On December 7, 1941, everything changes. The bombing of Pearl Harbor means Tetsu's Japanese-American family will be relocated to an internment camp. Gila River camp isn't technically a prison, but with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no time frame for leaving, it might as well be. So when someone has the idea of building a baseball diamond and starting a team, Tetsu is overjoyed. But then his sister gets dangerously sick, forcing him to choose between his family and his love of the game. This is an impeccably researched, lyrical story about baseball, honor, and a turbulent period in U.S. history.

Alia's Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq


Mark Alan Stamaty - 2004
    Determined to preserve the irreplacable records of the culture and history of the land on which she lives from the destruction of the war, Alia undertakes a courageous and extremely dangerous task of spiriting away 30,000 books from the library to a safe place.Told in dramatic graphic-novel panels by acclaimed cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty, Alia's Mission celebrates the importance of books and the freedom to read, while examining the impact of war on a country and its people.

House of Dreams: The Life of L. M. Montgomery


Liz Rosenberg - 2018
    When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, not a great deal was known about Maud’s personal life. Her childhood was spent with strict, undemonstrative grandparents, and her reflections on writing, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion," and her difficult married life remained locked away, buried deep within her unpublished personal journals. Through this revealing and deeply moving biography, kindred spirits of all ages who, like Maud, never gave up "the substance of things hoped for" will be captivated anew by the words of this remarkable woman.

Evidence Not Seen: A Woman's Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II


Darlene Deibler Rose - 1988
    Never to see her husband again, she was forced to sign a confession to a crime she did not commit and face the executioner's sword, only to be miraculously spared.

Hiroshima


John Hersey - 1946
    This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity" (The New York Times).

My Secret War: The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck, Long Island, New York 1941


Mary Pope Osborne - 2000
    After discovering that a German U-boat has landed near her home--a little-known, true incident on Long Island--she and her classmates form "Kids Fight for Freedom" and participate in the home front war effort.

The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II


Michael Rosen - 2019
    By turns charming, shocking and heart-breaking, this is the true story of Michael Rosen’s search for his relatives who 'went missing' during the Second World War - told through prose and poetry.When Michael was growing up, stories often hung in the air about his great-uncles: one was a clock-mender and the other a dentist. They were there before the war, his dad would say, and weren’t after.Over many years, Michael tried to find out exactly what happened: he interviewed family members, scoured the internet, pored over books and travelled to America and France. The story he uncovered was one of terrible persecution - and it has inspired his poetry for years since.Here, poems old and new are balanced against an immensely listenable narrative; both an extraordinary account and a powerful tool for talking to children about the Holocaust.Supported and checked by the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education.