Nobody likes to think about kids being in the middle of war. Kids are a vulnerable population in the cross-fire of that adult insanity, and when they get wounded or killed, innocent lives have been taken. So, those of us lucky enough to live in peaceful countries try to raise our kids in a cotton-wool world where everyone is kind, and children are never in danger. Still, it’s good for kids to know about those who have been brave, even in the worst of times. That’s one reason to read and share Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. Number the Stars documents the Danish Resistance’s effort to save the Jewish citizens of Denmark after Nazi Germany invaded their country. Officially, Denmark’s ruling government agreed to collaborate with the Nazi invaders; this allowed them to stay (nominally) in control so they could protect the citizens as much as possible. Unofficially, Danish citizens all over the country developed resistance cells to spy on and sabotage the invaders. After three years of fending off Resistance attacks, the Nazis decided to crack down Denmark. First, they took over Denmark’s government and policing authority; then they issued orders to deport all of Denmark’s Jews. In the…
Google remembered the liberation of Auschwitz today. For those who grew up in the latter half of the twentieth century, Auschwitz is the edge of a remembered nightmare, a disaster our parents and grandparents witnessed and passed in their memories to us. My mother saw the newsreels of the liberation as a child and the images haunted her forever but some of my friends were even closer to the tragedy. One college friend’s great-aunt was a survivor of the camps and when I met the lady, I marveled that this happy cookie-jar of a woman had faced such evil and still lived so joyfully, dancing with a tattooed number on her arm. Another friend was the child of camp survivors who married after the liberation and their tenacity and PTSD were visible in her character. Auschwitz left a lifetime of suffering and long memories in its wake and those of us not directly affected have been trying to grasp the motives and magnitude of the Holocaust ever since. This is the role more and more of the world has moved into over the last seventy years and it’s a role William Styron talked about in his novel, Sophie’s Choice. Styron…
I’ll admit it, I’m a snob when it comes to comic books. Early in my reading career it became apparent that an inverse relationship existed between the number of illustrations in the book and the expected IQ of the reader. (i.e., more pictures meant lower IQ). As soon as I figured that out, I headed for chapter books at high speed. Oh, I still enjoyed a great illustration once in a while but I knew better than to focus on them. And I couldn’t grasp why so many males in my generation continued to buy, read and discuss comic books after they reached legal maturity. It was like being trapped in a life-long, joke-less episode of “Big Bang Theory”. People could call the publications graphic novels or comics, I didn’t care. They were still just “funny books” for dorks. So I didn’t see Maus coming. Maus, if you haven’t seen it, is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about the Holocaust. And it’s animated, because Mr. Spiegelman is an illustrator. And, to put the icing on the cake, Mr. Spiegelman drew the characters in his work as animals. It sounds crazy but, believe me, it’s a work of genius. The…