Recent­ly, pub­lish­ers have been pre­sent­ing the Holo­caust as a pic­ture sto­ry book for chil­dren from ages five to eight. Stone Angel is a beau­ti­ful book, exquis­ite­ly illus­trat­ed and poet­i­cal­ly writ­ten for young read­ers by a bril­liant writer. I would give it a prize. It is so beau­ti­ful, it deserves one — for beau­ty and lan­guage. But is it real­is­tic? Not real­ly. The Nazis have invad­ed France, the Jews must wear badges, the store­keep­er no longer sells them their favorite treat, but out­side their apart­ment build­ing is a stone angel. Will it still be there when they return? If it is — TRIUMPH!

When can they return? Not before hid­ing in the woods, fight­ing with the Ger­man sol­diers (off page), and climb­ing a scary, beau­ti­ful moun­tain in the woods. They board a boat on the oth­er side and land in Eng­land where they sit out the war on a cute lit­tle farm. And after the war, the refugees just return to their coun­try, to their neigh­bor­hood, with the angel still on the build­ing. They are live­ly and hap­py although many in their fam­i­ly have been killed.

In truer sto­ries, groups of Jew­ish chil­dren escaped in small groups over the same moun­tains, the Pyre­nees, to Spain. If they did not escape the Nazis, they would have been forced to board the train and fol­low the friends who have been caught straight to Auschwitz. But that’s not suit­able for five-year-olds.

Stone Angel is far from real­i­ty. Exquis­ite as it is, and as grace­ful­ly as it is told, it is not real­i­ty. In this book the Shoah is fright­en­ing, a lit­tle — but still pret­ty. The top­ic is pre­ma­ture for its audi­ence. Chil­dren need to be at least ten years old for a prop­er intro­duc­tion to the Holocaust.

Stone Angel, review by Mar­cia Berneger

A pic­ture book about the Holo­caust is no easy task, but mas­ter­ful writer Jane Yolen has suc­ceed­ed with her poignant new book, Stone Angel. Using her amaz­ing pic­turesque lan­guage, Ms. Yolen weaves the sto­ry of a young girl and her fam­i­ly forced to aban­don their Paris home dur­ing the Nazi Inva­sion. Com­ple­ment­ing the gen­tle text are Katie May Green’s beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions. The images are filled with shad­owy grays and mut­ed col­ors, por­tray­ing the events in a non­threat­en­ing way.

To avoid cap­ture, the fam­i­ly hides in the for­est, for­ag­ing for food from the trees and plants sur­round­ing them. Maman’s soft lul­la­bies and com­fort­ing tales of angels watch­ing over them soothe the lit­tle girl (whose name we nev­er learn), shel­ter­ing her, and the read­er, from the hor­rors sur­round­ing them. The fam­i­ly is soon joined by oth­ers flee­ing the same ene­my. When Papa decides the for­est has become too dan­ger­ous, he takes the fam­i­ly over the moun­tains toward Spain, hop­ing to find pas­sage to Eng­land where Cousin Jacob lives. But the jour­ney to Spain has dan­gers of its own, and Aron, the lit­tle broth­er, becomes very sick. ​“Ask your angels to look after him,” Maman tells her daugh­ter. And the lit­tle girl does just that.

We con­tin­ue to fol­low the family’s jour­ney to Eng­land, where they spend four peace­ful years with Cousin Jacob. When the war ends, the fam­i­ly joy­ous­ly returns to Paris. Look­ing up at the win­dow of her new apart­ment, the lit­tle girl sees a stone angel smil­ing back at her. She is sure it is the one who had watched over them, keep­ing them safe until they could return. The sto­ry ends on this com­fort­ing note. Ms. Yolen also includes an end-page with a short descrip­tion of the Holocaust.

Stone Angel is a gen­tle intro­duc­tion to the Holo­caust for young read­ers. Bra­vo to Jane Yolen and Katie May Green! Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 5 – 8.