Chance
Escape from the Holocaust: Memories of a Refugee Childhood
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“Harrowing, engaging and utterly honest.” —Elizabeth Wein, The New York Times Book Review
“A captivating chronicle of eight turbulent years.” —The Wall Street Journal
A “Best Book of the Year” from: The New York Times ● Publishers Weekly ● Kirkus Reviews ● Booklist ● Jewish Journal ● Horn Book ● Chicago Public Library
A National Jewish Book Award Finalist
From celebrated Caldecott Award–winning illustrator Uri Shulevitz comes a landmark World War II memoir of hope amid harrowing times and an engaging and unusual Holocaust story.
In September 1939 , as German bombs started falling on Warsaw, four-year-old Uri Shulevitz sat still while his mother tied new boots on his feet and told him, “We’ll need to walk a lot.” So begins Uri’s arduous eight-year journey with his family, fleeing Poland and the Nazi onslaught for a precarious existence in the Soviet Union. From the freezing wilderness confines of a labor camp all the way north near the White Sea to hunger-filled years of displacement all the way south in the city of Turkestan, Uri recounts the lucky breaks and setbacks that happened to him and his parents along the way.
Powerfully illustrated by the author and with a few surviving personal photographs and mementos, Chance: Escape from the Holocaust also depicts young Uri’s awakening as an artist, whose love of making pictures helped sustain him. Altogether, this is a unique, enthralling memoir of a displaced childhood from the beloved Caldecott medalist, the capstone to a remarkable career.
Don’t miss Uri Shulevitz’s stunning final published work, The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man’s Journey Across Wartime Europe, a gripping true story of a young Polish exile fighting to survive in war-torn Europe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This searing, evocative memoir chronicles the wartime experiences of Caldecott Medalist Shulevitz, whose family fled 1939 Warsaw to avoid persecution when he was four years old, only to suffer starvation and other tribulations in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Germany before eventually settling in Paris. The spare, keenly observed narrative offers a harrowing look at a Jewish family's plight during WWII while documenting the birth of an artist with a great capacity for creativity: Shulevitz draws stick figures in profile before the war, sketches "with my finger in the air" to distract himself from hunger in Turkestan, and hones his craft to win a citywide drawing competition in Paris. Stark and powerful black-and-white drawings by the author underscore gritty realities: people forced to carry water after Nazi planes bomb Warsaw, tension and fear in a truck bound for Bia ystok, confrontations with Soviet officials, and a crowded bed the family inhabits in a settlement work camp. This affecting memoir of Shulevitz's childhood as a war refugee provides a deeply personal testament to the power of art. Ages 8 14.
