What lengths would you go to protect your family? "The Promise" is the story of a family torn apart by the Holocaust. Toby and her sister, Rachel, are sent to a concentration camp together. As Toby’s parents are being wrenched away by the Nazi soldiers, they provide her with three gold coins. They tell her that she will know when she needs to use them. She promises that she will not be separated from Rachel and says goodbye to them for the last time. This story is based on the true experiences of the authors’ mothers. It depicts the terror the children feel at the hands of their captors in a sensitive, age appropriate fashion. Cardinal’s digital collage art captures the haunting hues of their prison. The epilogue provides information and photographs of the real Toby and Rachel. Recommended.

One of the traditions, in Judaism, is to retell the story. This is especially true of the Holocaust. The people who survived it are dying off, as it gets further and further away from the present generation. The stories we are hearing now, are those that are being told by their children and grandchildren. It is good that there is some witness, even though it is once or even twice removed.

You might think we have had enough stories of the holocaust, be they novels or picture books, but each story is different, and each story should be told. This one, of two sisters, who survived the camps, was apparently written by first cousins, who had heard their mothers tell the story often enough that they could tell it as their own.

The pictures, as seen here, are very bleak, but then, so is the story and subject itself.

<img src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Screen-Shot-2018-02-08-at-12.01.04-AM.png">

and here is the picture of the sisters all grown up.
<img src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Screen-Shot-2018-02-07-at-11.58.24-PM.png">

This is a very harsh, but very easy to read book on the holocaust, which would be good in school libraries, as well as public libraries.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

The Promise is a children’s story book written by Pnina Bat Zvi and Margie Wolfe, and illustrated by Isabelle Cardinal. It is about the true story of two sisters, Toby and Rachel, who got imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. It is a given fact that the Holocaust period is one of the dreadful events in the history of mankind, and even young kids were victim of this atrocity.

Toby and Rachel’s story, and their pledge to each other to always be together were brilliantly narrated in this book. Despite of what happened to them in the Auschwitz camp was tremendously horrible; their tale of how they survived to keep their promise is quite fascinating.

A highly commendable read and a great way to introduce kids, as young as ten and below, about what is the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and the concentration camps during the World War II. There are a lot of moral lessons that kids could pick up after reading this and parents or teachers must carefully explain and point out it to them.

*thank you to Netgalley and Second Story Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review*

4 stars.
This is the first children's picture book based on the Holocaust and Auschwitz that I've seen and read. To write and illustrate a book such as this for children needs to be done well and right. I believe that given the horrendous and emotional topic, there is a fine line between just how much to mention to such a young audience, but this story was very well told. It focused on the love between the two sisters Rachel and Toby while staying true to the events and cruelty of what it was like inside the camp without overly doing it. At first I will admit I wasn't a fan of the artwork, but by the end of the book, I can see now that it actually fits pretty perfectly with the story. You dont want the whole cute, beautiful and colourful illustrations you see in most childrens books because this story is not your typical childrens book. It is a story of a very dark time and the illustrations show that. Based on a true story, this is defiantly one book I would recommend. I really enjoyed seeing the pictures in the back of the real-life sisters and hearing that they remained so close throughout their lives.