Cover Image: When I Grow Up

When I Grow Up

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Member Reviews

It is beautifully written and another way to teach the holocaust to children. Will definitely be adding to my classroom library.

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This was a phenomenal and heart-wrenching collection of stories from young Jewish people prior to WWII. What an amazing archival find! I loved the graphic novel format that really brought their stories to life. I was left with many cultural questions that I will be exploring

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my eARC in exchange for an honest review.

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'When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers' with editing and art by Ken Krimstein is a graphic novel of stories of six Eastern European teenagers right before WWII.

In 2017, a trove of lost Yiddish writing was found in a church in Lithuania. Ken Krimstein, a New Yorker cartoonist, selected some entries in a contest by Yiddish teenagers. The rules stated that the contestants had to be anonymous, so with the exception of one entrant who broke the rules, no one knows what happened to these young writers on the eve of World War II.

There is poignancy and humor to be had here. The promise of futures that were cut short or tragically changed. The art works here and there are lots of words in the Yiddish language to pick up along the way.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Bloomsbury USA and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

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What a mind-blowing recovered document. We're talking about stories of young Jewish people during the nascent Nazi years.That's already interesting as a real life snapshot of a very particular time in history. TO then realize that these were forgotten documents that somehow survived tremendous upheaval and widespread destruction. Did I always understand what the writers were talking about? No, but that doesn't mean I wasn't interested.

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*received for free from netgalley for honest review* from what i was able to read i really liked this book but unfortunately at least one entire story was blank in the ARC i received so ill be looking for a hard copy to read the whole thing

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