Picture Books for the Young Adult Reader

My topic and focus area for the text set that I am building is based around World War II (all aspects) and the Holocaust. (I teach The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank each year in the 8th grade.)I thought it very important to be able to be knowledgeable of a wide variety of books available for this broad topic. And, of course, I would like to be able to share more stories and history with my students in the classroom.

The four picture books I chose to read this week are:

1. Let the Celebrations Begin! by Margaret Wild and Julie Vivas
2. Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchiya
3. War and the Pity of War edited by Neil Philip
4. Hiroshima No Pika by Toshi Maruki

Let the Celebrations Begin!
This story is set in a concentration camp at the end of the Nazi reign. Throughout the whole story a young girl speaks of the toys every child will have after the war is over and they are all saved. They also speak of the types of food they will all eat once everyone is saved. This book screams hope; even though this was a very dark time in history.

Faithful Elephants
This story is set in Tokyo at the Ueno Zoo during World War II. A zoo keeper tells about a monument for animals who have died at the zoo; this particular day he tells of the story about three elephants named John, Tonky, and Wanly. These three elephants were killed - starved to death because no other way would work - so that if the zoo was bombed the animals would not run wild and cause more destruction and chaos. This book was truly sad; it almost made me shed a few tears when I read of the starvation these animals had to go through. But, the book does make a point in the end about war and the despair that war brings to us all.

Hiroshima No Pika
This story follows a family who were victims of the bombing of Hiroshma in World War II. It really gets at the heart of the struggle and the pain these families went through just to survive. This family does somewhat survive, but not without consequences; many were condemned to be ill for the rest of their lives due to the radiation. This story also has very interesting illustrations; they are definitely for young adult readers and were more sophisticated in my opinion.

War and the Pity of War
This book contains a collection of many poems about every war you can pretty much think of. There are few picture (but there are some)but the poems are very well written and any student can find at least one that he or she can understand. Here is an example of one of the poems from the book that I think I will definitely share with my students next year:

The House That Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943 by Jane Flanders

I am the boy with his hands raised over his head in Warsaw.

I am the solider whose rifle is trained on the boy with his hands raised over his head in Warsaw.

I am the woman with lowered gaze
who fears the solider whose rifle is trained
on the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.

I am the overcoat
who loves the woman with lowered gaze
who fears the solider whose rifle is trained
on the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.

I am the stranger who photographs
the man in the overcoat
who loves the woman with lowered gaze
who fears the solider whose rifle is trained
on the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.

The crowd, of which I am each part, moves on
beneath my window, for I am the crone too
who shakes her sheets
over every street in the world
muttering
What's this? What's this?

I believe this poem (after having discussed the Holocaust already in class) will be a great source of discussion and perhaps spark other students to write poetry themselves over this topic. I really enjoyed reading a lot of these poems in this book.