The Tower of Life by Cana Stiefel and Susan Gal - ESSENTIAL

The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs by Cana Stiefel, illustrated by Susan Gal NON-FICTION, PICTURE BOOK Scholastic Press (Scholastic). 2022 $19.00 9781338225891 

BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3), EL, MS - ESSENTIAL 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE 

For over 900 years, a small Jewish community thrived in a village in Poland, but during WWII the Germans invaded and the town was destroyed along with most of the residents. Yaffa who was a young girl at the time, escaped with her family. As an adult, living and teaching in the United States, she was asked to contribute to the Holocaust museum. She remembered photographs taken by her aunt, some which she managed to saved, and began a world wide search for other photos of the village and of the people who lived there. The thousands of photos she collected became The Tower of Life in the museum. 

I remember seeing this remarkable tribute on a visit to the museum several years ago - for me, it was most heartbreaking moment of all. Yaffa's story is beautifully told and contains some of the actual photos - the picture of "Yaffa and the chickens" is the cutest thing. A perfect accompaniment to a study of the Holocaust, I'm buying a copy for my middle school library. 

Lisa Librarian