Here's What Happened...

one summer at work we had this Summer of Wonder.  And it featured the book Wonder.  Now I have loved this book ever since I read the ARC.  Fell in love with it right away.  LOVED it.  But then the Summer of Wonder just killed it for me.  It was just...I don't know...the way we did it...ah...it is complicated.  But this doesn't take a way from what a great book it really is.  So when I saw White Bird, well I was still thinking of the Summer of Wonder and I really didn't want to read it.  No interest at all.  But man, man, man I am so glad I did.  I listened to it and I know it is a graphic novel and so I will read it, but man the audio was just powerful.  Especially Palacio's author's comments at the end.  IMPORTANT.  Please, please, please let us never forget.  It is happening again.  It is.  Please.  Speak up.  Please.  Love and love and love again.  And do not be afraid.  Do not let others prey on fear and turn us into people who devalue and dehumanize others.  We are all diversely created children of God.  Please, please do not be frightened into hardening your hearts.  Please do not be frightened into thinking that rights for all mean less rights for some.  That is how it begins.

Extremely Well Done

What Was the Holocaust?  Is one of the best in the What Was/Is series and it is the best book I have read for students this age on the unspeakable horrors of the Nazis and the Holocaust. 
The introduction of the book said it best in that the book would tell what the Holocaust was and who was murdered and who committed such crimes, but it would not explain why because there really is no way to explain such evil. 

Really, Really Excellent

Alan Gratz was a speaker at PSLA a couple of years ago, and he was talking about his then new book, Prisoner B-3087.  I had not heard of the book or the author prior to that, for which I was embarrassed and so very thankful that I learned of him and read the book.  It was incredible.  After reading Refuge, I am even more glad because it was even more incredible, if that is possible. This is my pick for the Newbery so far, for sure.

3.5

Almost Autumn is one of those books that I couldn't give a 4 or 5 to, but I would recommend.  It was a very good book.  I just had a hard time staying interested and I think that was because of the way it was written, in this case translated, because it was originally written in Norwegian.
The brutality and the unbelievable horror of the Holocaust never fails to make one sick, right?  And it is especially powerfully awful when the characters just don't understand yet what is going on, just how evil things are going to be.  In this book we get a look at the treatment of the Jews in Norway, about which I knew nothing.

Thought-provoking

The Sunflower:  on the possibilities and limits of forgiveness is a book I won't forget, recommended to me by one of the kindest and most beautiful souls I know.  This is some book.  I listened to it, so I wasn't sure who all of the respondents were, but wikipedia has a nice listing of them, that was very helpful.
Simon was asked by a dying Nazi to be forgiven for the crimes he had committed, well, one specific crime, one that kept him up at night.  Simon refuses to give an answer and he wonders if he did the right thing.
He asks the question, "what would you have done?" and at first, and actually, at second, I am just floored by the people who felt they could answer this question.  Granted, many who did answer the question admitted that they didn't really feel like they COULD answer the question, but they tried.
It just seems to me that I don't know what I would have done if I were Simon in this horrific situation. I can say with certainty that what Simon did was the right thing.  If he had chosen something different, that would have been the right thing, too.  I feel like he had every right to do what he felt led to do, with no comments that I or anyone could make being fair or worthy or moral.
While I have had great respect for the Roman Church in the past, I admit I am troubled by how many Roman Catholics felt the need to vote for now President-Elect Donald Trump because he is "pro-life."  While Mr. Trump may very well be anti-abortion now (he was pro-choice in the past)  he is not pro-life for Muslims, African Americans, Mexicans, and those of the LGBTQ community.
Additionally, I have been very outraged by the Reichskonkordat.  Of the 53 respondents, 10 said "forgive."  Of those 10, half were Roman Catholics, 2 were Tibetan Buddhists, 2 Protestants and one listed no faith.
10 people were "uncertain," among them were 3 Jews, 3 Protestants (one of Jewish ethnicity), 1 Muslim, and 2 who listed no faith.
The 43 others all said to "not forgive."  19 Jews, 3 Roman Catholics, 2 Protestants and 9 who listed no faith.
So 55% of the Roman Catholics said "forgive."
33% of the Protestants said "forgive."
100% of Buddhists said "forgive."
100% of Jews said "do not forgive."
I simply can't say that I would be able to forgive.  There is no way, no way that I could presume to put myself in that horrible, horrible position.  All I can say is that Wiesenthal did the right thing.  Not that he needs my approval, indeed, I think it is even presumptuous of me to say as much.  So instead, I will just pretend that I am at least more "moral" than the Roman Catholics who suggest that Mr. Wiesenthal should have forgiven the Nazi.  (Delusional, yes, but I am angry right now, and at least I know that most priests would forgive me, right?)
I had to give this 3 stars because the "forgive" responses troubled me so very much.  For Wisenthal's part- a 5 all the way.

Horror Stories

There are many horror stories that don't have anything to do with Halloween.  The Holocaust that took place during and before the outbreak of WW2 is one of them.  As Mr. Rogers said, look for the helpers.  That doesn't make the horror any less, but it does offer some hope.
Reading The Boy on the Wooden Box, by Leon Leyson I learned more about the horrors and more about one of the helpers, Oskar Schindler.
I have heard of the movie, Schinder's List, but I haven't seen it.
Leyson was the youngest person on Schindler's List.  He is listed this way: No. 69128, Eisendrehergeh.  He died in 2013, but not before he wrote this incredible book.
I learned more about the horrors of Nazi Germany, including information about the Plaszow camp, which I had not heard of prior to this book.
Schindler was named to the list of the Righteous Among the Nations, which was also new to me.   Fantastic book.  Hard.  But fantastic.

Hitler Youth

Denazification is a term of which I was unfamiliar until reading Projekt 1065:  A Novel of WW2 by Alan Gratz who also wrote Prisoner B-3087.  I read more about former Hitler Youth and I found this article to be of interest, about Melita Maschmann and her Account Rendered memoir.  And this article about Pope Benedict XVI.  And I thought back more to that Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor who was a Nazi.  He was not a kid though.  So that is different.  Maybe?  How old is "old enough" to know?  Does evil have an age? I just don't know.  I don't know.  I think also about Kurt Waldheim.  And I remember telling a joke to my ninth grade gym teacher, "What is Waldheimer's Disease?"  When you forget you were a Nazi.   I remember being sickened by Waldheim, even then.  It surprised me, but my gym teacher had never heard of him.  I think that was one of those moments when I realized that just because someone is a teacher, doesn't mean they have all the answers.  But that is a topic for another time.
Gratz's book is excellent.  Heart crushing.  But that is life, especially the horrors of it.

Hard to Swallow

I don't think that it can be said, "another book about the Holocaust" because that connotes that we don't need "another book about the Holocaust," or so it seems to me.  And we do need "another book about the Holocaust."  Because it was so unspeakable and so horrible and so inhumane and so-hard-to-believe-that-a-human-being-could-do-this.  That is why we always need "another book about slavery" and "another book about what we did to Native Americans" and another and another and another.  Because racial hate and crime and violence keep going on and on and on.
Anna and the Swallow Man is a VERY different Holocaust novel.  I am not quite sure, no, I am VERY sure, I didn't understand all of it.  I would love to talk to someone who did understand it.  I know it wasn't meant to be taken literally, all of it anyway, but there was just so much that went over my head.  However, it was so well written and the parts that I did "get" were profound.  So I would very much recommend this, even though I can't say I understood it.

Human Nature

I have talked a lot about human nature.  We do horrible things to one another. And the German and Japanese atrocities that led to WW2 are examples of the very worst, of the most horrific behavior that humans have demonstrated. These are the stories that chill one's soul.  No matter how many times I hear them, I am sickened and shocked in whole new and terrible ways.  It seems ironic, maybe, if that is the right use of the term that Hitler and the Nazis would deem Jews, Gypsies,  homosexuals, persons with exceptional abilities to be "inhuman"  when Hitler and the Nazis behaved in such ways that suggest that they are completely void of any kind of humanness.  Even if humanity is evil, how can people such as these have been SO evil.
Prisoner B-3087 is based on the story of Yanek Gruener who survived unspeakable hell at the hand of the Nazis.  Alan Gratz does a remarkable job doing what must have been a hell to write, but needed to be written.

The Father

Sid Fleischman is a great storyteller.  The Entertainer and the Duybbuk is a poignant, at times humorous story of the spirit of a boy killed during the Holocaust who possesses a ventriloquist's dummy in order to seek revenge upon the Nazi criminals who took his life.

Stories

are so powerful.  I guess that is one of the reasons why I am passionate about librarians defining their work as a service. That's why I like language like "patron" instead of "customer."  I just feel like we, those who work in libraries are in a service profession.  A relational profession.  One in which we need to be ready, as I often say, to "open a vein" to serve our community.

Long has my motto been, "It's better to burn out than rust away." And when I read a book like Mara's Stories:  Glimmers in the Darkness, I know I am right.

Here is the remarkable Gary D. Schmidt, although there is no D. on the cover, serving all of us, by sharing tales from the Jewish tradition as if they were told from a concentration camp prisoner to those around her, in the evenings, after another day of hell has passed.

These are beautiful and horrifying and hopeful and heart-breaking.  And the author talks about their origin at the end of the book, which makes it all even more  powerful.  Once again, a must-read for all.

And as a librarian, I need to make sure that as many people as possible have the experience of hearing stories such as these.