Identity is the central theme of this book. What creates your identity? Is it your heritage? Your DNA? Who raised you? Choices you made? This story alternates between the experiences of Anna, a young Jewish girl from Luxemburg who is sent to America during the Holocaust, and her great granddaughter by adoption, Imani, who is preparing for her bat mitzvah. As part of that preparation, as well as the recent death of her great grandmother, Imani researches her family’s Jewish heritage and what her great-grandmother went through as told in the diary she left behind.  All the while, Imani is struggling with who she is and if she should ask her parents to find her birth parents.

This is a deep book. The author did a wonderful job of not being graphic with the content while still portraying the real and atrocious thing the Holocaust was. She really drove home that the numbers represent actual people with lives and families.  She also made the experiences of the Jews who immigrated to America relatable to the here and now, although not to the same extreme. There are some fun, middle grade elements of school interactions, crushes, and family interactions to balance everything out. It is a great read and I would recommend it to WWII aficionados. 

Review of an Advance Reading Copy

This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Dial Books for Young Readers

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  9 religious exclamations. 

Violence/Gore:  Reporting of the passing of a grandparent; fur coats referred to as fur murder; pretend play by minors that they are starving, crushed by a car, or hanging of a cliff to be saved by a superhero; sibling lunges at sibling; report of a man being killed; minor hit head on desk; mother jumps out 5 story window with baby to escape Nazi; report of whole family being killed in concentration camp (reported 3 times); description of a picture of concentration camp prisoner with sunken chest; report that 36/674 people from Luxemburg survived the war/camps; threat of ‘you would have slapped him’; minor punched arm of minor lightly – flirtatious; implied death of parent; banged knee; threw plate on the floor; report of Pearl Harbor Bombing; implied report of sibling’s death; child was pushed/jumped from a train.

Note:  The book is about the Holocaust. By nature, the subject matter is heavy.

Sex/Nudity:  2 kisses between minors.

Mature Subject Matter:

Holocaust, extreme poverty, war, immigration, leaving family, adoption, racial differences. 

Alcohol / Drug Use:

None