A friend mentions that her ten-year-old thought Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue
was very sad. I haven't read that one , but the mention of Lowry makes me think of
her Number the Stars, a wonderful book about the incredible actions of the
Danes during the Holocaust. (Picture the complete opposite of how the Poles acted
(the Polar opposite?) and you'll pretty much have it. I have no idea what makes
one country behave so nobly and another so unspeakably, but I am sure that the
causes are not singular or simple.)
Anyway. The Lowry book makes me
think of another I just finished, The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen, and
reminds me that I had wanted to write about that. If you have a child who is of
the proper age and mindset to read that one, consider this a warning -- a yellow
light, proceed-with-caution sort of warning, rather than a red light stop. It's a
very good book. It also describes daily life in a concentration camp modeled on
Auschwitz in unflinching detail.
I think I understand why Yolen
decided to do that, in a children's book. The concept of "witnessing" is woven
throughout the book; one motivation for survival in the camps was to become a
witness, who could later tell the world of the Nazis' atrocities. If other
generations can be made to witness, through the medium of fiction, the memories
will be carried on further.
And after all, maybe it's not right to
protect children from the knowledge of evil. Children weren't protected from dying
in the Nazi ovens, or in a despairingly long series of other wars and genocides
stretching to the beginning of the last century and probably before it. And if
they know how awful the consequences of hatred can be, maybe they will refrain
from starting the next wave of genocides. Maybe one reader of Yolen's book will
grow up to be another Dr. King or another Moses. Or at least, not grow up to be
another Hitler.
So if I had a daughter who wanted to read The
Devil's Arithmetic, I wouldn't try to stop her. but I would certainly make
sure I was there afterward in case she needed support.