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Four Perfect Pebbles:: A Holocaust Story
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About Four Perfect Pebbles:: A Holocaust Story
Product Description The twentieth-anniversary edition of Marion Blumenthal Lazan’s acclaimed Holocaust memoir features new material by the author, a reading group guide, a map, and additional photographs. “The writing is direct, devastating, with no rhetoric or exploitation. The truth is in what’s said and in what is left out.”—ALA Booklist (starred review) Marion Blumenthal Lazan’s unforgettable and acclaimed memoir recalls the devastating years that shaped her childhood. Following Hitler’s rise to power, the Blumenthal family—father, mother, Marion, and her brother, Albert—were trapped in Nazi Germany. They managed eventually to get to Holland, but soon thereafter it was occupied by the Nazis. For the next six and a half years the Blumenthals were forced to live in refugee, transit, and prison camps, including Westerbork in Holland and Bergen-Belsen in Germany, before finally making it to the United States. Their story is one of horror and hardship, but it is also a story of courage, hope, and the will to survive. Four Perfect Pebbles features forty archival photographs, including several new to this edition, an epilogue, a bibliography, a map, a reading group guide, an index, and a new afterword by the author. First published in 1996, the book was an ALA Notable Book, an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, and IRA Young Adults’ Choice, and a Notable Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, and the recipient of many other honors. “A harrowing and often moving account.”—School Library Journal From Publishers Weekly Amid a growing number of memoirs about the Holocaust, this book warrants attention both for the uncommon experiences it records and for the fullness of that record. Marion Blumenthal was not quite five years old in 1939 when her family fled Germany for Holland, ending up in the relative safety of Westerbork, then a refugee camp run by the Dutch government. They had visas for the U.S. and tickets for an ocean crossing, but during a fatal three-month postponement of their sailing, the Germans invaded Holland. By 1944 the Blumenthals arranged to be part of a group bound for Palestine in exchange for the release of German POWs; the family was instead sent to Bergen Belsen, where they remained, together, in the so-called Family Camp. Marion, her brother and parents survived the war, but her father died of typhus several months after liberation. Written in the third person, the book lacks the searing intensity of such memoirs as Ruth Sender's The Cage or Isabella Leitner's The Big Lie, also for this age group, but it is unusually complete, not only in its skillful presentation of the historical context but in its treatment of the Blumenthals' horrifying journey. Quotes from Lazan's 87-year-old mother are invaluable-her memories of the family's experiences afford Marion's story a precision and wholeness rarely available to child survivors. Ages 10-up. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal Grade 6-10?A harrowing and often moving account of the co-author's family's struggle to survive the Holocaust. Opening in Bergen-Belsen, the story retraces the events leading up to the Blumenthals' imprisonment there. After Marion's grandparents died, she, her brother, and parents left Germany for Holland to wait for a visa that would allow them to come to the U.S. Their papers came, but sailing was delayed and Hitler invaded Holland. The Blumenthals then applied to join a group that was to be sent to Israel in exchange for German POWs. Soon after arriving in Bergen-Belsen, however, they realized that they would not be exchanged. They survived the camp and their family remained intact. Ironically, Mr. Blumenthal died of typhus shortly after liberation. After three years as displaced persons, Marion and her mother and brother finally arrived in the U.S., where there were new adjustments to be faced. The story is told only partly from Marion's point of view. More often, it is told by an o
