Books Matter™

Children's & Young Adult Literature

Would you defend the indefensible? That's what high school seniors Logan March and Cade Crawford are asked to do when a favorite teacher instructs a group of students to argue for the Final Solution--the Nazi plan for the genocide of the Jewish people.

In pre-World War II Vienna, Lisa Jura was a musical prodigy who dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. But when enemy forces threatened the city—particularly the Jewish people that lived there—Lisa's parents were forced to make a difficult decision.

Anne Frank’s diary is a gift to the world because of Miep Gies. One of the protectors of the Frank family, Miep recovered the diary after the family was discovered by Nazis, and then returned it to Otto Frank after World War II.

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent a lifetime disagreeing: disagreeing with inequality, arguing against unfair treatment, and standing up for what’s right for people everywhere.

Fleeing the Holocaust in Europe, Marcus moves with his family from Berlin to Shanghai, where he doubts this unfamiliar city will ever feel like home.

Holocaust survivor Krystyna Chiger details her early years, largely spent hiding from Nazi and Ukrainian persecution, including the fourteen months she spent with her family in underground sewers.

This book tells the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.

A story of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.

Taken from his Czechoslovakian home at age fifteen and transported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz with his family, Holocaust survivor Martin Greenfield tells his incredible life story.

Based on a true story, this book is about neighbors in a small Danish fishing village who, during the Holocaust, shelter a Jewish family waiting to be ferried to safety in Sweden.

A portrait of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania in 1940, explains how he used his powers to assist thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust.

With incredible luck, perseverance and grit, Leon Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis.

A picture book biography of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker who helped save nearly 2500 Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II.

As the president of the American Young Sisters Society, nine-year old Golda Meir organizes her friends to raise money to buy textbooks for immigrant classmates.

In this true and moving story, Alter Wiener, a teen survivor of five Nazi prison camps during World War II, transports young readers back in time when an unexpected person demonstrated moral courage in repeated acts of kindness toward him.

In this ABC tour of Israel, readers learn about the peoples, places and history of one of the world’s most ancient lands.

This book offers a look at the events leading up to the creation of the modern state of Israel.

A story of two Jewish sisters, escapees of the infamous Warsaw ghetto, who devise a plan to thwart an attempt by the Gestapo to intercept food bound for starving people behind the dark Wall.

For one horrific night in November 1938, the streets of Germany and Austria were overrun with people bent on destruction.

The experiences of Russo's relatives before, during, and after World War II are the basis for this story about a grandmother sharing with her young granddaughter photo albums of her "first life" (in Germany) and her "second life" (after the war).