Irena's Children: Young Readers Edition

Gr 6–10—Irena Sendler, a righteous Gentile who rescued approximately 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw ghetto, is the focus of this volume. Sendler's father, a Catholic doctor who treated Jews others turned away, grew up speaking Yiddish with close Jewish friends. Her senior role at a government agency positioned her to offer help following the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland. Sendler and an inner circle of trusted friends, Jewish and Christian alike, used creative means to spirit Jewish children away to safety in orphanages and foster homes. Tortured by the Nazis, she gave up no secrets, keeping the children and her network safe. While the book is strong on general historical context, featuring descriptions of socioeconomic divisions among Jews in occupied Warsaw, it suffers from the wartime loss of direct historical evidence. Many of the individuals portrayed—Sendler included—do not feel fully fleshed out, making the narrative somewhat confusing and lessening the emotional impact. This is a story better suited to shorter treatments, such as Marcia Vaughan's Irena's Jars of Secrets. More readable, engaging volumes on similar individuals exist, such as Irene Gut Opdyke's In My Hands and Alison Leslie Gold's A Special Fate.