An extraordinarily powerful and poignant novel about people, about caring and about life itself. Utterly compelling as a great story should be and touches a nerve in more ways than one. Other titles by Jerry Spinelli include Love, Stargirl, Stargirl, and Eggs.
A Message From The Author:
Dear Reader:
Why did I write this book? (Readers will want to know, my publisher said.) A fair question.
In one of my earliest memories, I am sitting on the floor staring at a picture in a book. The picture shows a heap of bodies. I turn the page this way and that, seeking a proper orientation. I am bewildered. In my short life there is no reference point for what I see.
The events that became known as the Holocaust have touched me ever since. And yet for a long time I hesitated to write of it. Did the world really need another Holocaust book? And even if it did, who was to write it? What credentials did I have? I was neither Jew nor survivor nor survivors relative. All I have was a ticket stub from Schindler’s List.
Then I came to see that I had every right presume. Because I cared. And had I not been telling young writers for years: “Write what you care about?”
And because I am people, and in the end, in the book, that’s what they are too – Misha and Uri and Janina and Uncle Shepsel and Tata. They are more than Jews and Holocausters and orphans. They are people. Like those in this picture.
This is the true story of Jews and Gypsies in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation.But it is also the story of a street orphan who survives on quick thinking schemes to find food, who believes in bread, mothers and angels. A tragic but beautiful account through the eyes of the innocent, about the Holocaust.
‘A spare and beautifully written book...There is not a false note in it’ Guardian
‘This is a remarkable book - a great story that is funny and moving, but at the same time, quite harrowing’ The Bookseller
Author
About Jerry Spinelli
Jerry Spinelli is one of the most gifted storytellers in contemporary children's literature. A past winner of the Newbery Medal, his books include the critically-acclaimed Stargirl, The Mighty Crashman, Milkweed and Eggs. Jerry Spinelli lives with his wife, Eileen, who is also a writer, in Willistown, Pennsylvania, in the United States of America.
