The Promise

Written by Pnina Bat Zvi and Margie Wolfe

Illustrated by Isabelle Cardinal

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-058-2

32 pp.

Ages 7-10

April 2018

The cover of The Promise is all encompassing. Within that single graphic, the reader knows the darkness and sobriety of a story told in a concentration camp during World War II, an impenetrable bond, and a smidgen of hopeful blue sky. This is The Promise.

When Rachel and Toby's parents are taken away by the Nazis, the two sisters are given three gold coins, hidden in a shoe paste tin, to help save their lives and asked to promise to always stay together. 

"...above all, stay together.  This is how you will both survive." (pg. 5)

From The Promise by Pnina Bat Zvi and Margie Wolfe, illus. by Isabelle Cardinal

When the two girls are taken to Auschwitz, slaving away at mindless work and starved with meagre food rations, they show courage in small acts of heroism and defiance.  But when Rachel falls ill, all is put at risk. Though Toby begs to work double for her sister, she returns to find Rachel gone from their barrack.  Knowing this could mean the worst, Toby uses the gold coins to bribe an inmate acting as guard at the barrack of the sick to allow her access and an opportunity to sneak Rachel out.  However, the next day Rachel's unauthorized return is noted by their Nazi guard who punishes Toby for her actions though, in a miraculous turn, allows Rachel to remain with her sister.

From The Promise by Pnina Bat Zvi and Margie Wolfe, illus. by Isabelle Cardinal

Against all odds, Rachel and Toby, the mothers of authors Pnina Bat Zvi and Margie Wolfe respectively, honoured their parents by staying together.  Though it was Toby who held onto those coins for years until the time came to use them, both young women showed extraordinary fortitude in everyday acts of courage and endurance such that they were able to survive a camp from which over a million never returned.  Likewise, Pnina Bat Zvi and Margie Wolfe honour their parents with the retelling of this story, told with admiration and candour. 

From The Promise by Pnina Bat Zvi and Margie Wolfe, illus. by Isabelle Cardinal

To add to the story's power, artist Isabelle Cardinal uses digital collage to blend reality with illustrations.  The horrors she needed to convey–hunger, illness, fear, cold and more–are evoked in the photos of faces but tempered with the sombre drawings of stark colours and textures. The art, like the story, is commanding and yet subtle. 

Based on a true story, The Promise reveals just one significant but uncelebrated act of heroism during a time and place of brutality. It's a story that needs to be recognized and its characters acclaimed for their survival.

Fania's Heart

Written by Anne Renaud

Illustrated by Richard Rudnicki

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-057-5

32 pp.

Ages 7-10

March 2018

When a little girl finds an old heart-shaped book wrapped in a lace handkerchief hidden in her mother's dresser, she could not have imagined the horrors her mother would share and the joy and courage that decades old keepsake memorialized.

Words have power.

There are words that injure and words that heal.

Then there are words that can save your life. 

From Fania's Heart by Anne Renaud, illus. by Richard Rudnicki

When a young Sorale discovers that small fabric-covered booklet of heart-shaped pages that open like wings, her mother finally tells the child the truth about the number tattooed on her arm and the origins of the keepsake.  Her mother, Fania Landau Fainer, reveals that she was a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp and that the heart was a birthday gift constructed by the young women who were like sisters to her.  Fania tells Sorale of the horrific life in the camp, including the near starvation, the grim living conditions, the forced labour and the mistreatment.  And she tells her what happened for her 20th birthday.

"...I told my friends I would soon be an old lady, since my twentieth birthday was fast approaching." 

"But twenty is not old," I said.

"Twenty can be a lifetime.  We were all so worn and rope-thin.  People did not live to be old in that place," said my mother.

From Fania's Heart by Anne Renaud, illus. by Richard Rudnicki

In a small cake of scraps of bread rations, Fania's friends hide the special heart-shaped booklet in which they wrote messages of encouragement and wishes for freedom outside of the camp.

"Their words saved me."

Fania's Heart is a true story.  It is Sorale's story of learning at about age 9 (in 1955) about her mother's incarceration at Auschwitz and an act of defiance and love that gave Fania the courage and determination to survive.  That solitary memento is now an exhibit at the Musée Holocauste Montréal (Montreal Holocaust Museum) which will host the book launch for Fania's Heart this weekend.  Not since Second Story Press's publication of Hana's Suitcase (named the Ultimate Silver Birch Book in 2014) will a story of a historical artifact of the Holocaust touch readers with such sadness and humanity.  Author Anne Renaud who effortlessly weaves stories based on history (including the recently reviewed Mr. Crum's Potato Predicament) reveals so much about a mother's relationship with her child and her past, as well as about her own courage and fortitude that Fania's Heart could be envisioned as an illustrated documentary, not just a piece of creative non-fiction to inform and enlighten. Like the little heart that represents so much more than the few words inscribed on pages created out of sacrifice and secrecy, Fania's Heart is a token of appreciation, realistically but emotionally illustrated by Richard Rudnicki, from a time of war atrocities and a time of familial safety.

From Fania's Heart by Anne Renaud, illus. by Richard Rudnicki

The Magician of Auschwitz

Written by Kathy Kacer

Illustrated by Gillian Newland

Second Story Press

978-1-927583-46-3

32 pp.

Ages 7+

For release September 5, 2014

Yesterday, Second Story Press added a unique title to its auspicious collection of Holocaust remembrance books: The Magician of Auschwitz by Kathy Kacer, illustrated by Gillian Newland.  As befits a picture book recounting any event that would take place in one of World War II's most horrific concentration camps, The Magician of Auschwitz is dark and sombre in tone and atmosphere, both in its text and its graphics.

A young boy, Werner, is delivered to the Auschwitz concentration camp, alone, separated from his mother and sister.  In the cramped barracks and overcrowded bunks, Werner learns quickly enough that only the strong will survive. This makes him even more curious about Herr Levin, a gentle, soft-spoken, middle-aged man with whom Werner shares the uppermost bunk.

The physical and emotional hardships of the days at the concentration camp are only accentuated by the dark nights of fear-filled sleep.  When guards come in the night and demand that Herr Levin do his magic, Werner anxiously watches as his bunkmate performs card tricks for the guards' entertainment.  There are more nights when they are awoken and Herr Levin works his magic, with cards, string and coins.  And, though Werner believes Herr Levin will benefit from his entertaining acts for the soldiers, Herr Levin makes it clear that, "This is not a game, and it is not a show." (pg. 16) He was performing for his life.

Kathy Kacer's notes, titled How it Happened, explain the real story behind The Magician of Auschwitz.  In Auschwitz, Werner Reich, the young boy, met Herbert Levin, a man who had been the well-known magician Nivelli the Magician.  There the gentle man shared his tricks with Werner and his compassion and strength of spirit in a horrific situation.

"Someone had cared about him and given him some hope.  There was enough real magic in that for Werner to hold on to." (pg. 24)

Kathy Kacer emphasizes the connection between the boy and magician and their unique relationship based in respect and magic while in the camp.  But the details of their later lives, very separate but still connected, complete their stories so appropriately. And Gillian Newland touches upon the heart of their relationship, a sliver of brightness, among the dark grey-browns of the heartless concentration camp, where survival is everything. There are few splashes of colour in the camp, only the playing cards and a swastika armband.  The power of both is clear. Only in a final illustration of an older Werner Reich with his two sons do warmer tones of orange, olive and turquoise appear.  The message in the words and the illustrations are quite clear.  From the darkness with few lights of hope came brighter lives, though still muted by earlier events that stole much family, hope and life from so many. The Magician of Auschwitz is an important book of accepting hope wherever possible in the most hopeless of situations and from the most surprising of sources.

A touching book trailer for The Magician of Auschwitz may be viewed here.

Soldier Doll

by Jennifer Gold
Second Story Press
978-1-927583-29-6
256 pp.
Ages 13-18
March 2014

One doll. Five wars. Many hearts touched.

A summer yard sale doll, with a cherubic face and a soldier's uniform, is the quirky birthday gift fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Bryant picks up for her dad, an engineer shipping out with the military to Afghanistan in a few weeks.  Just recently relocated to Toronto from Vancouver, Elizabeth goes to check out the neighbourhood and wanders into a bookstore where she meets Evan, an older teen who works there.  Talking books, Elizabeth and Evan learn they share an appreciation for author Margaret Merriweather's work, and he introduces Elizabeth to her poetry, including her famous poem, "The Soldier Doll." 

As Elizabeth delves into the poem, she discusses the possibility that the doll of which Margaret Merriweather wrote may in fact be the doll she purchased for her father.  While the reader will know this to be true from the historical anecdotes involving the soldier doll that are interspersed in Elizabeth's narrative, the teen, her parents and Evan set out to discover the mystery of the doll, looking into its provenance and journey to the Toronto yard sale where it was found.

The little soldier doll, originally a girl's keepsake after the loss of her mother, is shared years later with her fiancé as he heads to France in 1918.  Though the soldier doll is thought to be lucky by his fellow soldiers, it begins the next step of its journey when the young man is killed and the doll ends up in an antique shop in Germany.  Without spoiling the story, suffice it to say that the soldier doll is present when Jewish people were being rounded up in Berlin, when the Red Cross comes to assess the conditions at the concentration camp at Terezín in Czechoslovakia, when young American soldiers seek the Viet Cong in Da Nang, Vietnam, and after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 when the war on terrorism begins.

Almost a century of history is witnessed by the unusual wooden doll, privy to secrets and shared fears, watching death, destruction, kindness and hope all twisted together.  With Elizabeth and her family endeavouring to learn its complete story, Jennifer Gold is able to bring the Soldier Doll home, both in the story and with her writing.  Wrapping all that history in a mystery makes for an intriguing read.  While I thought that Elizabeth's dad knowing an archaeologist/historian was a tad convenient, I realize that with his history (pun intended) of seeing the fantastic amongst his yard sale finds he'd probably reached out to everyone and anyone who could verify them as authentic.  And in a story where a doll is able to reach across time and place and work magic on those who held it, I think that coincidences may be more fortuitous than contrived.

Jennifer Gold is very astute in using the doll as the focus for discussions of life and death, war and peace, and responsibility and honour.  Even as the narrative moves from World War I to World War II and ultimately to the recent war in Afghanistan, I wondered about those who enlisted or were drafted and went to war under a banner of duty or compassion, and ultimately had to face the horrors and tragedy of war.  The wars that the soldier doll witnesses may have different names and locations but those who live and die through them are always the same.

"I wasn't sure what the right thing to do was.  I don't think the right thing was that clear.  I guess it never is, not in a war, really." (pg. 263)

Not much has changed.  But, just as history is apparently told by the victors, the Soldier Doll lives on because of those who endured or lived long enough to share its story. And though one veteran acknowledges that, "It's hard to be the one who lives" (pg. 265), the living are critical in keeping those who passed alive.  Just like the soldier doll does.