Teen Booklist

  • After the War

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    By Matas, Carol  After being released from Buchenwald at the end of World War II, fifteen-year-old Ruth risks her life to lead a group of children across Europe to Palestine.
  • Anne Frank and Me

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    By Bennett, Cherie  After suffering a concussion while on a class trip to a Holocaust exhibit, Nicole finds herself living the life of a Jewish teenager in Paris during the Nazi occupation.
  • Behind the Bedroom Wall

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    By Williams, Laura E. 

    Thirteen-year-old Korinna must decide whether to report her parents to her Hitler youth group when she discovers that they are hiding Jews in a secret space behind Korinna's bedroom wall.

  • Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A Fable

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    By Boyne, John  Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence.
  • Emil and Karl

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    By Glatstein, Jacob  Written in the form of a suspense novel, Emil & Karl draws readers into the dilemma faced by two young boys--one Jewish, the other not--when they suddenly find themselves without homes or families in Vienna on the eve of World War II. A taut, gripping page-turner, it offers a picture of life during the period and the moral challenges faced under Nazism--and a prescient glimpse of the early days of the Holocaust. Written in Yiddish, it is here translated into English for the first time. In Vienna, Austria, in 1940, two nine-year-old boys, one Jewish and one Aryan, are classmates and best friends when events of the Nazi occupation draw them even closer together as they fight to survive and escape together.
  • If I Should Die Before I Wake

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    By Nolan, Han  As Hilary, a Neo-Nazi initiate, lies in a coma, she is transported back to Poland at the onset of World War II into the life of a Jewish teenager
  • In My Enemy's House

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    By Matas, Carol  When German soldiers arrive in Zloczow during World War II, a young Jewish girl must decide whether or not to conceal her identity and work for a Nazi in Germany in order to survive.
  • Jakob the Liar

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    By Becker, Jurek  In 1943, life for Jews in the ghetto is grim. Deportations in cattle cars have begun, and daily life is overseen by cruel guards. Jakob overhears a radio (forbidden in the ghetto) and learns that Russian tanks are advancing on his town and coming to liberate them. This news transfixes the ghetto. As Jakob is prodded for more news, he begins supplying information from a radio that now exists only in his imagination. He finds himself trapped in  his growing mesh of lies until he is driven to tell the truth. This fable is one of the great literary masterworks of the Holocaust.
  • Katarina

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    By Winter, Kathryn  During World War II in Slovakia, a young Jewish girl in hiding becomes a devout Catholic and is sustained by her belief that she will return home to her family as soon as the war ends.
  • My Canary Yellow Star

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    By Wiseman, Eva  When the Nazis invade Hungary, Marta is barred from classes because she is Jewish; her father is arrested and sent to dig ditches. Even the act of seeing her friend Peter could mean death for them both, because Peter is not Jewish. Things grow worse: Peter disappears, food becomes scarce, and the family is evicted. Then Marta hears about an obscure diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, who may be able to help her family.