Review: Cat with the Yellow Star

Coming of Age in Terezin

By Susan Goldman Rubin with Ela Weissberger

Holiday House; 2006; 40 pages

Juvenile Non-Fiction; History/My Choice

Grades: 3-5

ISBN: 978-0-8234-1831-6

The story of a girl who grew up in the Terezin concentration camp during WWII, and how art, opera, and friendship helped her survive.

My Thoughts:
I initially picked up this book because I had studied the art program at the Terezin concentration camp while taking a study abroad course in Prague as an undergraduate. The book far surpassed my expectations, and I feel that it is a great introduction for young readers to a very difficult topic. The subject matter is hard. People suffer, people die. The writers seem to take the view that children are resilient, and that while they need material at their level, they do not need to be sheltered from realities. Yet, even though the book is bleak, the messages of hope, perseverance, and the indomitability of the human spirit are inspiring. Readers will be able to identify with the main personages. By using children to put faces onto the events, modern children are provided with something familiar while trying to grasp events that will seem foreign.

One of the best things about this book is not the text though, its the artwork. There are TONS of photographs, both of the children and of the locations. Young readers need the visuals to be able to mentally visualize what is being described. Due to the time period almost all of the photographs are black and white, yet the book is full of color. Samples of the childen's artwork that was created in Terezin are interspersed throughout the text. It is awesome. I highly recommend this book, especially to people doing units on the holocaust or a unit on art.

The Thoughts of Others:
Booklist ran a review of the book by Hazel Rochman which appreciated above all how honest the book is. Rochman wrote that "there's a hopeful message about the power of music, art, friends, and teachers, but the account never denies the fact that transports were always leaving for the death camps and some of the prisoners did not survive."

Teri Markson's review for School Library Journal found the book "rich in detail, yet not overwhelmingly dire...a book about remembering, and the importance of sharing one's stories with the next generation, and the next." She truly liked the work, and was especially enamored with the amount of quotes and sources of information used.