Another great picture book

Erika's Story written by Ruth VanderZee. This picture book deals with the horrors of the holocaust. The storyteller survives the holocaust because her mother, in an attempt to save her, throws her from a moving train. One picture in the book shows a wrapped bundle, (the baby) being flung from the moving train. I wondered whether or not this would be too graphic or gruesome to read to children. Some of the feedback I had from other teachers was that they would not read the book to primary students. (But I did anyway). The story is a celebration of life, of future generations that exist because of a mother's desperate and courageous act. It generated a lot of discussion about the horrors of war, and the disbelief that things like this actually happened.