It is Passover, and Hannah dreads attending the first night’s Seder at Grandpa Will, Grandma Belle, and Aunt Eva’s house. Her grandfather’s strange outbursts about the Holocaust embarrass and frighten her. Following ancient tradition, Hannah opens the door for the prophet Elijah, but instead of seeing a hallway filled with apartment doors, she sees a…
The year is 1940. Growing up in the Bronx, thirteen-year-old Tommy Duncan divides his time between school, friends, and family. He listens to Brooklyn Dodgers games on the radio, plays stickball after school, and worries about his mother’s declining health. He doesn’t share his friend Beth’s fascination about the war in Europe. The war is…
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay takes off from an airstrip on an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean. The plane with its payload — an 8,900-pound atomic bomb — heads for Hiroshima, Japan. The effects of such a bomb are terrible, and America hopes that unleashing its terror on a…
Because of the “Fury,” Bruno’s father is assigned as the commandant of a Polish concentration camp that Bruno calls “Out-With.” So, Bruno’s family moves from Berlin to a desolate place with no other houses and no other children. The new house gives Bruno a bad feeling, a feeling that grows into a pain in his…
Through poetry and letters, Mina Tagawa tells her family’s story. Soon after Pearl Harbor, her father, a newspaper reporter, is arrested under suspicion of sedition. Every day, Mina and her brother endure verbal and physical attacks at school. Mina wants to scream every time she hears, “Jap.” She doesn’t feel Japanese. She’s an American! In…
