This is the loveliest illustrated book for children (but also meaningful for all ages). Eva Unterman is one of the few known Holocaust Survivors living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A few years ago, she came to visit my school to share her story with our kids. Her health has limited her in visiting schools in other states these days, but I'm so grateful she was able to visit when she did and that I was able to get a signed copy of this book (her story!). ( )

Through Eva’s Eyes is a pic­ture book based on the expe­ri­ences of the young author’s grand­moth­er, Eva K. Unter­man, in the Lodz Ghet­to and after­ward, in var­i­ous con­cen­tra­tion camps. The author, Phoebe Eloise Unter­man, began writ­ing and illus­trat­ing the book when she was 13 years old, when she sub­mit­ted it to the ​“Kids-In-Print” con­test, where it won a Gold Award in 2006. After a few years of rewrit­ing and redraw­ing, Land­mark House books pub­lished her impres­sive sto­ry. She has a gen­uine abil­i­ty to dis­cuss his­to­ry in a way that young peo­ple can relate to, and the illus­tra­tions cre­ative­ly depict emo­tions expe­ri­enced by many Jew­ish chil­dren through­out Nazi occu­pied Europe. The author presents her grandmother’s child­hood per­spec­tive from age 6 to age 12: that of hav­ing a hap­py child­hood destroyed by war and per­se­cu­tion until her fam­i­ly was final­ly lib­er­at­ed by the Russ­ian army. She writes: ​“The ter­ri­fy­ing Ger­man occu­pa­tion of Lodz brought much stress and mis­ery to all Jew­ish fam­i­lies. Even as a child, I real­ized that we were being stripped of our rights.”. The writ­ing is very clear and the sto­ry is very mov­ing and appro­pri­ate for chil­dren from about fourth grade and up.