From: Monica Edinger <monicaedinger>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:46:48 -0400

Lelac, your unit sounds excellent. I think Number the Stars is highly appropriate for this age group for the reasons you state. And I'm also very happy to know that you begin by using supplementary materials to provide historical context. I think such context is critical. I hear of kids wondering how Anne got "into that attic" because none was provided.

I'm personally very fond of Anne's diary because my grandmother gave it to me when I was eleven along with a diary right before we went off for a year in Germany (as my father is not only a German Jewish refugee, but also a specialist in German politics). It was 1964 and we visited the Anne Frank House which had recently opened. Years later I went back and realized that the diary my grandmother had given me was exactly the same as Anne's. She must have brought it to America with her as she left Frankfurt around the same time the Franks moved to Amsterdam. (Sadly, my grandfather chose to stay and was killed.) If I were teaching 7th graders a Holocaust unit today I would definitely want to use it. In addition to my personal feelings about it, I like that it is true not fiction and feel that her voice is so compelling and easy for an eleven or twelve year old to connect to. Still.

I'm very close to Germans as I have family members who were assimilated (baptized in earlier generations) and so are still there as well as many family friends. Many helped my parents' families (my mother was from Berlin) in various ways like some of the characters in Markus Zusak's remarkable book, The Book Thief.

There are many beautiful recent picturebooks related to the Holocaust, but I sometimes wonder about the audience. That is, they seem to be for rather young children whom, I think, are not really ready to know so much about the Holocaust.

Monica

Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at gmail.com
Received on Wed 19 Apr 2006 03:46:48 PM CDT