I really enjoyed this book, it deals with an incredibly sensitive topic extremely well. It is perfectly pitched for middle grade and above. The characters are believable but a little underdeveloped, I thought. However, I think the author has created an incredible story and I would highly recommend. Have already passed it on for others to read. It removes the things we know about the holocaust by removing the language that we're used to. It shows how horrific it is by hitting us with how relateable it can be to the children. How those kids could be us or our kids. In almost a dystopian future... except it was the past.

This is a gorgeous tale of a talented young seamstress struggling each day to survive in Auschwitz. The characters are beautifully developed, especially our two mains, Rose and Ella. The plot carried along at a clip, while pausing occasionally to focus on a truly beautiful moment in an otherwise gray tale. Whether it was a story from Rose or a dress description from Ella, these little spots of color and life created small positive moments that not only brightened your experience with the story, but gave the characters something to live for as well. The ending was very touching and I think showed a reflection of humanity that is often missing from Holocaust stories. Finally, the subtle hints at an LGBTQIA story were masterfully handled. It's definitely there, but it doesn't dominate the overall plot. I took a star off for Hendrik, bc his storyline felt forced and didn't fit the arc well at all. Otherwise, this was a joy to read.

Ella is a 14-year-old young woman who lands in Auschwitz-Birkenau after being picked up on the way home from school. She lies about her age to be placed in the Upper Tailoring Studio; a dressmaking studio within the camp, where the skeletal women Ella calls "Stripeys", referring to the prisoners' striped uniforms, make dresses for their clients: the wives and girlfriends of the SS officers, and the female SS officers themselves. Ella has dreams of being a dressmaker and finds herself more than up to the task, but her friend Rose points out that there's a fine line between doing what's necessary for survival and collaborating with the enemy, no matter where one's true passion lies.

The Red Ribbon looks at some big issues taking place during the Holocaust: there really was a dressmaking studio, where prisoners repurposed clothing taken from the arriving prisoners to make clothing for the SS wives, girlfriends, and officers. There were prisoners who acted as "prominents": they oversaw other inmates and could be almost as cruel and demanding as their jailers. Ella's talent for dressmaking gains her notice from one SS officer, an 18-year-old named Carla, who leaves her small gifts for trade and invites her to share birthday cake with her one time and viciously beats her another, calling her inhuman. Rose acts as Ella's conscience, seeing through the illusion Ella desperately wants to create: an illusion where her grandmother is still safe at home and waiting to hear from her; an illusion where her dressmaking talent is valued, and the Auschwitz "Department Store" is a kind of thrift store and not a pile of stolen goods from stolen lives. Ella's desperation to hone her dressmaking talent borders on collaboration, but she refuses to acknowledge it until a heartbreaking moment when her beloved grandmother's sewing machine lands in front of her in the Studio. It smashes Ella's naivete, but she and Rose bolster one another, and the women around them as they pray and wait for liberation.

There are some devastating moments in this story, and Lucy Adlington's words weave beautiful, terrible visions. Prisoners tell each other to "Look down at your sewing, not up at the chimneys". One prisoner is so desperate for news about her children that she asks about an SS officer's son: "Tell us about the little boy -  how old?  My son was three when they took us."

The book equally captures desperation and determination; hope and despair. It's a good add where collections need YA fiction that discusses The Holocaust. Display and booktalk with Antonio Iturbe's The Librarian of Auschwitz, The Diary of Anne Frank and John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (I've seen this title in both Juvenile and YA collections); Elie Wiesel's Night and Tatiana de Rosnay's Sarah's Key, and Art Spiegelman's Maus. The Jewish Book Council has an excellent list of Holocaust-related YA books. There is a creative writing resource available for free download from The Hay Festival.

I knew going into this one that i was going to have nixed feelings about it. It's a hard topic to read about, but the author handled it very well. The story felt real and was told in a beautiful way. I'd definitely recommend it.

Books about concentration camps are always tough to read, and it makes me a little uncomfortable saying I enjoyed reading about them. However, The Red Ribbon offers a unique perspective that makes the story very captivating. Although in a terrible situation, the novel also felt full of hope. There were a lot of scenes describing sewing, which were a little boring, but overall I really enjoyed the story.

The Red Ribbon is engrossing. From the first lines through the final chapter, I devoured Adlington’s book.

The Upper Tailoring Studio at Auschwitz was a real place where 23 prisoners sewed amazing dresses for the Nazi elite. It was created at the command of Hedwig Hoess, the wife of the concentration camp’s feared commander Rudolf. The studio was a haven of sorts for those prisoners, who escaped heavy manual labor and occasionally received extra food in exchange for a job well done.

Ella and Rose are fictional characters, although their stories are not far from the truth. In The Red Ribbon the two find themselves thrust into the impossible position of finding joy while working for those who took everything away. Ella has always dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, and at the studio, her talents are valued. But the suffering that surrounds her mutes her sense of accomplishment.

Ella’s true joy comes in the form of a new friend, Rose. Rose is a political prisoner whose fancy upbringing included learning to embroider. Rose enhances Ella’s creations with her skills, but her true gift is that of a storyteller. Rose’s stories have a way of bringing people together and helping them momentarily escape the horrors they’re living.

I read The Red Ribbon in one day. Adlington’s writing is smooth and welcoming, which is appreciated with such a difficult setting. Ella and Rose are as familiar as the girls who live next door. Their resilience and friendship are beautiful.

The Red Ribbon is a compelling read that’s definitely worth your time.

I knew reading The Red Ribbon was going to be an experience just by the description alone. I was expecting horrible living conditions, difficult moral choices, and a story of survival. I did receive that but I was blown away by all the moments of kindness that I ended up finding.

The many female characters that I ended up going on a journey with were wonderful and horrible, stingy and generous, and above all they were human beings. Our leading ladies Ella and Rose are girls that one cannot help but love. Their beautiful friendship is the things of which dreams are made of. 

If you have been searching for your new historical fiction book, then look no more! 

Note: A longer review will be posted on my blog on September 13th.

Ella is walking home from school and is taken to Auschwitz and put to work as a seamstress for the wives of Officers'  and for female guards.  This is a work of fiction, but there are many details that are real.  This was such a horrific time in history and the author did a beautiful job of highlighting what life was like for these young girls that were seamstresses.

Birchwood - more commonly known as Auschwitz, is where we meet 14 year old Ella, starting her first day as a seamstress in The Upper Tailoring Studio, making beautiful dresses for Officers wives and female Guards.

I was asked to review this book a while before I was actually able to begin reading though it. When I realized that it was going to be published before I had even gotten started I began to read without reminding myself what it was that I was about to read. As I started I met Ella, a girl trying to pass herself as a 16 year old, trying to get a job as a seamstress. She characterized the people she was meeting by the qualities they shared with animals. She talked in brief snaps about family members that she was going to be reunited with and with everything that I was reading I very quickly assumed that this must be a dystopian society that I was being introduced to. (Read that, "I thought that I was reading something akin to "the Maze Runner")

You can imagine my surprise and almost horror when I realized this was about the Holocaust. I had to stop reading when I realized that to adjust my view from my "fiction-fiction" glasses to my "historical-fiction" ones. Real people experienced the things that were being related and it kind of shook me how easily I was able to accept Ella, Rose and the rest of the characters' plight due to it being dystopian literature. 

Anyway, back to the book itself because it was so good that I was able to finish it in a days reading. (again, I need you to read that, "I couldn't go to sleep until it was done and I knew how it ended")

Ella is our main protagonist, she finds herself deposited in Birchwood-- linked to the real life Auschwitz. We follow along with her as she tries to survive and, at points, thrive as a dress maker. She has dreams and plans for when the "stripies" are returned their freedom and can go home. She wants to own a prestigious dress shop and she even imagines the clientele that she will leave Birchwood with (the female guards and  wives). 

Her life at Birchwood is also broken up with the growing friendship with Rose, a girl that claims herself a countess and can spin stories that bring freedom for a few brief moments each evening to the people trapped with them. 

As tension raises at Birchwood, and Ella begins to see the depravity for what it is, her hope for the future begins to only be tied with a red ribbon promise. Can they make it until the liberation comes? What will be left afterwards?

This was an excellent book!

I received a copy of this book in exchange or my unbiased review.

The book takes you back to the middle of the 1940’s during the second world war and the holocaust. Our protagonist, 14-year-old Ella, is on her way home from school but is being arrested like millions others and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, also called “Birchwood”. The story is heavily based on the horrific true events of the holocaust, but the characters are a work of fiction.

When Ella arrives at Birchwood she is stripped of her clothes, hair and name, put in a striped suit with a yellow star marking what kind of prisoner she is -  a jew. On her arm she gets a number. Nothing from her old life matter anymore, only the number and the star. Nobody in the camp cares about names or who you were before you arrived there. In Birchwood everything that matters is surviving. At first Ella is quite frail and naive, like any other 14-year-old but she soon learns that friends and being a prisoner in the camp don’t go hand in hand. It’s all about doing the smart thing before someone else take the opportunity, if not - you’ll die.

Ella starts working as a seamstress in the tailoring studio at Birchwood, where they have to sew clothes for the guards, officers and their wives. Soon another young prisoner starts being friendly to her and this crosses everything Ella has recently learned at the camp - you can’t afford caring for anyone else other that yourself if you want to see the next day. But despite her better judgement she chooses to return the friendliness and soon a strong story about friendship and hope begin.

I don’t think I will look at clothes the same way as before. Ella talked about how when you are stripped of all your clothes and put in the same striped dress as hundreds or millions of others - you are not you anymore, just another stripe in a sea of them. Clothes really define you - even if you think you don’t have a “style”. Clothes say so much more about you as a person than you could probably tell on your own. I could really feel Ella’s desperation for clothes. In the middle of this Ella also described people as animals after how they walked, talked or looked. I think that was a really excellent way of separating the characters and bringing more life to a story about a place as dark and cold as Birchwood.

In conclusion this was a very powerful story that both brought me to tears because of the horrifying things Ella, Rose and the other prisoners had to endure, but also made me laugh and smile while Rose told Ella stories about the City of Light and their bright hope for the future.To know that people deny the holocaust, saying that it hasn’t happened, when we all know is was real, brings me to tears for the lives lost. This summer I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and you could really feel the horrors of it all in the wind as you took the first step inside the area. Friendship, compassion, love and hope are the most important things in life.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange of an honest review.

This is yet another book dealing with parts of the war I didn't know about. I knew about Auschwitz and much of what went on there, but I had no idea there was an actual dress shop inside. While reading this, I stopped and looked up information on the real Upper Tailoring Studio, so I could know more about the real life events that inspired this book. I was quite surprised to learn that prisoners really did make dresses and other items for guards and officers wives. 

The writing in this was very lovely and accessible. It's easy for a younger audience to understand, but it's not immature either. The author doesn't go too deeply into the atrocities that happened there, though she does talk about some things. I'm assuming this was done because it's a YA book, and also because the dress shop was more of the focus. I think the author wanted to highlight a certain part of the war, without going into too much grisly detail so that it would be easier for younger readers. I really enjoyed Ella, the main character. She's young and a little immature at first, but quickly understands the situation she finds herself in. It was hard sometimes reading about prisoners wouldn't help another prisoner who needed it, or would purposefully hurt others to get ahead, but that is the kind of world it was. Helping someone could mean your death. And while some wouldn't, others would. Even in that darkest of places, there were still people willing to help others out.

I hope younger readers will read this and understand how real WWII was and everything that happened during that time, and do what they can to be a better person and accept others so that we will never have an event like this again.

Ella meets Rose on her first day as a seamstress in Birchwood. At first, Ella keeps to her dreams of sewing the most beautiful clothes for the German guards, but despite trying to devote herself to surviving and sewing, a friendship blossoms between her and Rose. Rose is the opposite of Ella. She’s whimsical, charismatic, selfless, and her heart is dedicated to storytelling while Ella is vicious, ruled by a spark to sew and survive, and she isn’t afraid to cut someone out of her way to do so. While Rose escapes from the horrendous atmosphere of Birchwood through her stories, Ella focuses on her lifelong dream of owning a dress shop where she will sew and design clothes for clients. Both these girls experienced ups and downs through their stay at Birchwood, but they never lost hope through their own means of survival. The friendship between these two was genuine and unbreakable, including the friendships with other girls they worked with in the sewing shop. So even though the setting of this story is a concentration camp, these two beautiful girls shined brighter through their actions, aspirations, and will to survive.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

wow, emotional for sure! I love stories in the historical genre that I can relate to.  when a book brings me to tears and I feel I must stop reading because I just cant handle what may be ahead BUT, I can't stop because I have to know how it ends.  This book is my new favorite .  Thanks to netgalley for the ARC.  The opinions in the review are my own..

I’ve always been drawn to stories about the Holocaust because I can’t believe the lack of humanity that caused it and the tales of bravery that emerged from it. While this book is based on true facts, women really did sew couture gowns for Nazi’s wives and female officers, the story is fiction. It tells the story of a young girl literally sewing for her life and the others who share the room and machines were beautiful clothing is made for hideous monsters. The book made me really emotional and upset. It was very well written and compelling and even oddly hopeful, but very heart-wrenching as well. If you are feeling especially stressed by life (new baby, grieving a loved one) or the current political climate (babies in cages and Trump’s repulsive support of Nazis) you might want to skip it to avoid undue stress.

The Red Ribbon is a painfully gorgeous story that demands to be heard. It ripped me apart and threaded me together with a new perspective by the end. I will never think of clothes the same way again.

Set in the Auschwitz concentration camp near the end of WWII, 14-year-old Ella dares to dream and create beauty in the ugliest place in history. Tenacious, intelligent, courageous, and passionate, Ella is endearing and inspiring as she withstands her harsh environment sewing high fashion clothing for the Nazi elite where her life hangs on every stitch.

She has the most delightful friendship with Rose who is storybook sunshine and an emotional anchor for Ella despite the terror and destruction surrounding them. Marta is a fellow prisoner and ‘boss’ of the sewing shop and Carla is a guard and client of the sewing shop. The moral greyness of their characters is intriguing and believable as their complex relationships with Ella examine the poisoned heart of the Holocaust beyond the historical facts and statistics. It in no way diminishes those important details, but it focused on individual choices and emotions, allowing me to see things in a different way than the usual fire hose of horror.

The author stated at the end of book that her goal was to show acts of kindness as heroism and how it can bring us together to defeat hatred and violence. She accomplished her task with exquisite skill. The beacon of hope at the core of this story is uplifting and empowering. It is a worthwhile read, especially for classes studying this topic.

There were only two things I wanted more of: deeper character for Henrik and insight on Ella’s decision regarding the death march. Everything else was so strong, these fell short. Though it doesn’t diminish my admiration for this story and its touching message.

i tried really hard to like this book, but i just didn't. the writing style was not for me, and i expected something very different when i read the synopsis. a book set during world war two and written in a vaguely comedic style is not my cup of tea, but i am clearly in the minority as lots of people did enjoy it

Walking home from school, Ella was arrested by the Nazi's and sent to Birchwood, a concentration camp.  Lying about her age, she becomes one of the seamstresses, creating fabulous dresses for the wives of Nazi leadership and female SS officers.  Ella becomes friends with Rose, another worker in the sewing workshop.  Together, they do everything they can to survive.

This was a well written and engaging young adult novel.  I didn't particularly like how the author renamed things - i.e. Birchwood for Auschwitz-Birkenau, Department Store for Canada.  It took away from the authenticity of the book.  Despite this criticism, I would recommend this book and read more from this author.

An absolutely amazing portrayal of life for two teens sent to work as seamstresses in a dress shop at Auschwitz during WW II.  One of the best YA historical fiction books set in a concentration camp that I have read to date.  An absolutely beautiful, well-written heartbreaking story that portrays the hope and these prisoners held onto through the years of this devastating war.  Do NOT miss this absolutely stunning book!!!!!!!

I received this novel from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I always find myself drawn to books that encapsulate the lives of the Jewish people, during World War two. I have been amazed with the horror and mass scale of it, ever since I can remember. This book is no exception, it is simply stunning. A fantastic tale of strength, honour and courage, but most uplifting, at its heart, is a tale of friendship.

Throughout this novel, we see Ella and Rose's friendship grow into something more, they plan a life together, and to quote Rose 'Bread is good, but friends are better'. These two characters are like chalk and cheese, but theiy loyalty to one another and their joy, light up a dark and horrible place.
I loved learning about the Sewing Station, and I say learning because as Adlington states in her afterword, it was based on a real place and on a real woman, who created it for her own vanity. I loved that the book was centered around dress making, it took away from the horror of the Holocaust that so many books about it, tend to dwell in. 

I loved the subtleness that this book brings to the horror of the time it was written in, the subtle nods to 'the chimneys', 'stripeys' or 'Zebras'. There was hardly any violence, mass killings or brutality explained in horriffic detail and that is what sets this book apart from others in its genre.

This is an incredibly moving book, it is part fact, part ficition and it will make you so, so greatful for the lives we have today.

My heartfelt thanks to Candlewick Press, the author and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review. It is very much appreciated. 

This novel is extremely well written and captivated my interest right away. I am always a little hesitant to read novels to do with the Holocaust because of the emotional and often graphic nature of the subject matter. However, the Red Ribbon described a different side of the concentration camps than is common in other novels about the Holocaust. 

This was a truly emotional read, and I found myself completely immersed in the story, and could very easily relate to the characters. You could truly sense the girls' struggle for survival and their lust for life. The author easily conveyed the emotional nature and sensitivity of this particular topic, in a way that would be appealing to this who prefer less distressing content surrounding the Holocaust. 

The Red Ribbon conveys a very powerful, touching message to young readers: hope conquers all. I would freely recommend this novel to anyone who likes historical fiction mixed with fact. It is a very important, powerful read.