No+Pretty+Pictures

Reviewed by Jennifer Yu**
 * No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War by Anita Lobel.

No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War, is Anita Lobel’s memoir of surviving the Holocaust. The story tells a true account of a five year old Jewish girl with her younger brother and a non-Jew nanny, escaping and hiding from the Nazis. Fleeing from countryside, into the ghettos, then back out into a shelter ran by nuns, Anita Lobel and her brother was eventually caught by the Nazis. Their mother during this time, had false papers that identify her as a non-Jew, so she was safe. After several years of hiding and imprisonment in the concentration camps, the war finally ended. Anita and her brother reunites with her mother and her father whom left to Russia before the war began. The family then immigrate to New York City, where Anita Lobel finds her profession in the art industry.

The book shows from the beginning of how Jews were captured and how Jews escaped from the Nazis in a simple way. Family departures were affected by World War II, causing one to leave their family members and then reuniting in later years if lucky enough. The Jews struggled through this tragic scene with fear and confusion, meanwhile a faith in something that kept them alive.

I really enjoyed the book, it was simple, not hard to read, and the text was easy to comprehend. Usually other World War II books gives very highly detailed information on what is going on, but this book is simply simple. The straightforward of this book causes less confusion to reader’s mind. While reading this book, I can picture of what is going on during the Holocaust time.

I would recommend this book to anyone to just practically anyone, especially ones who would like to learn from a true survivor of their experience on the Holocaust. No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War, is not a difficult to read, although there may be some words that are non-English, but readers can easily interpret the meaning of those words, sometimes there are also English definitions in parenthesis. It is suitable for any age, because there is no violence in this book. There are only one or two foul languages.