HarperCollins/Quill Tree Books, Pub Date April 1, 2025, 208pp.
Tova Friedman here recounts her own story as one of the youngest children to survive Auschwitz’s during the Holocaust, framed as a retelling to a friend she has met and trusts in New York, after World War II.
The book is an ostensibly middle reader version of Friedman’s adult book of the same, told from Tola’s (Friedman’s original name) point of view, first-person narrative, during the events of her life starting before the war. However, I had a hard time believing this is actually written for middle readers, not because of the content of the book itself (which is graphic and doesn’t hold back on the details of what Tola experiences before and during her stay at the death camp), but because of the language itself.
I worked at Houghton Mifflin as a line editor and developer in middle reader English textbooks as my first job in publishing and learned a great deal about language levels for reading comprehension for different age groups of children and how word charts are applied to text for children’s books. This book constantly uses words that are far beyond middle readers and brought me out of the story over and over again.
I must say that as a bookstore owner now, I can’t recommend this book for middle readers; young adults, yes, but middle readers, no. And that’s a shame, because it’s about Tova/Tola, told from her point of view, detail by detail about the death camp, Auschwitz, about her daily experiences with the guards, with others in the camp, with her mother, with the deprivations, starvation, cruelty, murder, and psychological torture the Nazis subjected both adults and young children to on a daily basis. The surety Tova/Tola had every day, ingrained into her as “normal,” that she would die at any moment. And the terrible normality for such a young child that this was her entire life: death all around her, death for herself.
And yet, the target audience will have a hard time reading this because of the actual language used. I hate circling around to that again, but there it is: it’s all about language with middle readers books. If a child can’t understand the words, they will put the book down. Not all: I was one of those children that lived with a dictionary at my elbow, even as a middle reader. But I was also neurodivergent, reading way above my level and a definite book geek.
I wish this book were written at middle reader level; I’d recommend it in a heartbeat. It’s such an important story; every child (every person!) should know about the Holocaust, and I feel the details in this books are necessary for the impact of the narrative. Some parents won’t want their children exposed to the fact that children were killed, that adults as well as children were shot, naked, starved, and thrown into pits like firewood. And yet it must never happen again, and to know that fact everyone, including children, need to know exactly what the Nazis did to Jews and marginalized people.
Though written for middle readers (despite the language level problems), I’d recommend this book to upper middle readers who are verging on young adult, as well as young adults. Tova’s story needs to be heard by this generation.
