Rating: 
Summary: Surviving Hitler: Behind The Scenes
Review: This book deals with a young teenage boy who is named Jack. He is suddendly taken prisoner by the Nazis and is never able to see his family. At the concentration camps, he suffers alot. He meets a new friend and with his help, they make it through.This book was a great experoence for me. You could learn many new historical facts with books like this. If I'd have to rate it, I'd say, "Drop everything else and read this book non-stop!"
Rating:
Summary: Utterly honest
Review: This book follows a young man readers can relate to as he endures the terror of being rounded up, of being ripped from his family and then surviving in a death camp. You can smell it, you can understand his fear, you can feel his bewildered relief at surviving. Much of what is depicted is stark and painful, although it is written clearly and without sensationalism (really, the events are so sensational, they don't need to be amplified.) Even as an adult, I got a visceral, gut-wrenching feel for this boy's experience. I recommend parents read this along with their child and be prepared for important discussions. Lest I scare someone off, let me clarify that it is not too harsh for a pre-teen or teen reader. It's just bound to bring up strong feelings and discussion-inspiring questions.
Rating: 
Summary: A Real Eye Opener
Review: This book is written for anyone who wishes to learn more about concentration camps and conditions during World War II in general. I had been taught the factual information and read the famous Anne Frank novel, but this book was a real eye opener. I had no idea how well planned the concentration camps of World War II really were. The fact that the prisoners in most labor camps had triangles denoting their reason for being there whether they were criminals, practiced a religion Hitler opposed, or other social delinquents showed a more sophisticated system than I had fathomed. The concentration camps were a very lucrative business and it is easy to see why when the prisoners are worked all day, fed almost nothing, save the bread filled with sawdust, and rated on the worth of their labor. Jack Mandelbaum is a perfect main character. His hard work and winning personality traits make it easy to see why he managed to stay alive. He has such a positive attitude and strength unimaginable that I don't think God himself could allow him to perish in a camp. Jack's mother is a bit impractical during the war as she still wears high heels in a time when some went without shoes. However, she may have been instrumental in Jack getting his Nazi working papers that in the end saved him from being sent directly to the gas chambers. There is a bright spot in the book when Jack meets and becomes friends with another Jewish prisoner, Moniek. They help to sustain each other and are most likely drawn to each other because of their positive outlook in such a dire situation. This book would be a wonderful novel to be read aloud in a Social Studies or Language Arts class studying the war. So often the military and strategic parts of a war are examined without the personal accounts which makes it all the more difficult to imagine the horrible things that were done. There is a wonderful resource section in the back of the book that would be very valuable to educators. This section details additional recommended books for grades 6-9, books for older readers, films and documentaries for older students, software, and websites.
Rating:
Summary: A really good book
Review: This is a really good book. It's a true story about a Polish boy in a concentration camp run by the Nazis. It tells what concentration camps were like. It tells about things like the bad food there and the brutal treatment of Jews. This is a great book. I read it and you should too.
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