Children's Book Review: Angel Girl

Angel Girl by Laurie Friedman, illustrated by Ofra Amit (Lerner/Carolrhoda, $16.95, 9780822587392/0822587394, 32 pp., ages 7-11, September)

The sheer numbers of those who were captured and who perished during the Holocaust can be overwhelming and nearly impossible to grasp--for adults, but especially for children. What makes the experience real and tangible are the individual stories. And what makes this particular story, the true story of young Herman Rosenblat, so well suited to children, is that he survived thanks to another child, a child whose name he did not know, his "angel girl." Friedman (Love, Ruby Valentine) crafts a narrative as spare as poetry. "Women, children to the right. Men to the left," she begins. "Boots clicked. Guns pointed. Commands issued." The passive statements telegraph the child's powerlessness against a nameless, faceless line of uniforms. Herman wants to go with his mother. She tells him, "The time has come for you to be a man." He is 11. By calling him a man and sending him with his older brothers, his mother saves his life. That's the last time Herman sees his mother, but not the last time he hears her voice. Day after day, Herman works in a factory, his only food an evening ration of watery soup before he goes to sleep "on a shelf, [his] thin body . . . pressed amongst hundreds of others."

Israeli artist Amit, making her American picture-book debut, creates long-faced, Modigliani-like figures that, even in the throes of starvation, possess a brightness in their eyes and a grace of movement. She applies neutral pastels over a rust-orange foundation and allows the reddish hues to outline the figures, creating a slightly jarring feeling that effectively keeps the focus on the prisoners and also suggests a halo-like quality. Then one night, Herman's mother comes to him in a dream, "Don't worry Herman," she says. "An angel will save you." Two days later, a girl appears outside the barbed wire fence, partially concealed by a tree, dressed in a rust-colored coat that echoes the outlines of the boy. Friedman makes clear the risk if the two are discovered: "One wrong move meant death. My death. Her death." But the angel girl comes back the next day and the next, always with an apple. While others starved, Herman lived. On the day the camp is liberated, Herman meets the girl at the fence one last time (in the scene used for the book's cover): "You were my angel girl," he tells her.

Years later, in the U.S., Herman has the same dream, and his mother tells him the same thing: "An angel will save you." A friend invites him on a double-date to meet a woman. She speaks of her family's farm in a small village in Germany. With exquisite pacing, Friedman reveals that she is Herman's angel girl. Her name is Roma. Amit, in a perfect echo of the pair's image at the fence, so many years before, renders Roma's face as a complex medley of gratitude, grief, joy and also the absolute serenity that comes with a sense of destiny. This postscript will be most meaningful to adults. What children will remember is how a girl, through her daily act of courage and kindness, saved the life of another child.--Jennifer M. Brown