Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

The story of Misha Pilsudski, an orphan boy who lives with a band of juvenile thieves on the streets of Warsaw. We see the holocaust progress through Misha's naive eyes as he finds friends and an adopted family, then loses them all one by one to the Nazi soldiers he once admired.

My verdict: Spinelli is always great. "Stargirl" will make you laugh and cry on the same page, and "Maniac Magee" was one of my all-time favorites growing up. "Milkweed" is a historical fiction, and I was glad to see that it brought something new to the plethora of young adult novels centered around the Holocaust. It's touching but not too graphic. Misha is a lovable narrator, and the supporting characters are richly diverse. Misha has never known his own family, but is adopted by a band of boy thieves, then later by a young Jewish girl and her family. These relationships enrich his life, but also put him in danger and give him a heartbreaking firsthand view of the cruelties of the holocaust. The ending gets a little strange as the adult Misha seems to lose his mind for a while, but I think it's probably an accurate portrayal of what a lot of survivors were like. Identity and family are strong themes in the book, and in the end Misha finally finds both.

Although most of the characters in this book are fictional, Dr. Janusz Korkzac was a real person. He is a very minor character in this book, but knowing his full story really makes the brief mentions of him interesting. Dr. Korkzac was a highly respected psychologist who ran an orphanage and published a mountain of work on how children in any situation could be raised with love and dignity. Although he was not Jewish, he refused to leave his orphans when they were sent to the ghetto, and later to a concentration camp where his life was ended. It's a touching story, and one that should be told more often. "A Hero and the Holocaust" is a great place to start.