Lila PerlRecensioni

Marion describes her story as the one that Anne Frank might have told had she survived past March 1945. Both Anne and Marion spent time in Westerbork and later Bergen-Belsen. Of the 120,000 Jews detained in Westerbork, 102,000 perished before the end of World War II, 18,000 survived. Anne fell into the former group, Marion, the latter. While Anne’s story is typically read by pre-teens and early teenagers in the world today, Marion’s serves as an introduction for those who are just starting to ask their parents and teachers how people can be so mean and intolerant of one another.

In a society that is quickly becoming more divided and more intolerant, Marion’s message of hope, faith, and family strength, is even more important than it was when she first started discussing her experiences a couple decades ago. While most may brush off the striking similarities to the current president’s rise to power and the Nazis, it is hard for those who truly know their history to ignore. It is even harder for those who know that atrocities of WWII still ring loud in their older generation’s ears, and yet their younger generations engage in racist and destructive behavior.

Marion’s story is one of compassion and hope during one of the world’s worst times. My only reason for giving a less than superb rating is that brevity of the book. While written with young children (9-11 years old) in mind, there is only so much that one can remember about those years themselves, particularly 50 years later, as was the case when Marion & Lila wrote Four Perfect Pebbles and Marion recounted her childhood to Lila. Everyone always wants more from a good book, but at 160 pages, Four Perfect Pebbles is incredible concise.

A fascinating and thorough account of the Egyptian process of mummification and efforts to safeguard places of burial against thieves.

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To the Golden Mountain is a history of the impact of the Chinese in America. While the subtitle refers to their work on the first transcontinental railroad the book is actually an overview of the arrival of Chinese workers in the 1850’s, their trials and tribulations in the California gold fields, their monumental contribution to the construction of the western half of the transcontinental railroad and a summary of the lives of Chinese in America in the post transcontinental railroad construction era. The overview is necessarily grim. It is essentially a story of bigotry and mistreatment by individuals and local, state, and federal governments which culminated in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (only World War II and the U.S. declaration of China as an ally brought about its limited repeal in 1943).

The book is aimed at the young adult audience but it would be of value to anyone seeking a clear, concise outline of the Chinese experience in the 19th and the first half of the 20th Century in America.

I have only three small complaints.
1. The author includes a number of period photographs but does not give an indication of their time of record. As a result one wonders if some of the pictures, such as the water boy on page 51, were taken in the 1865-69 time frame or later.
2. The author’s description of how the locomotives Jupiter and #119 came to be the representative engines at Promontory is incomplete and somewhat garbled.
3. The author provides a good description of the feat of laying 10 miles of track in a single day in 1869 but she fails to note that this record for length of track laid in a single day has never been beaten and, given modern track laying methods, it probably never will be matched or exceeded.

The book includes an excellent list of recommendations for additional reading. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining some understanding of the Chinese experience in 19th and 20th Century America and their contribution to the construction of the first transcontinental railroad.

(Text Length 105 pages, Total Length - 112 pages, includes foreword, 54 illustrations and photographs, bibliography, notes, recommended reading, and index.) (Book Dimensions inches HxWxT – 10 1/4” x 8 1/4” x 1/2”)½

My favorite books are the ones with true facts and history involved. One of these books is one of them. Part of the Holocaust, the stories that weren't told... This story is about Marion Blumenthal Lazan's unforgettable childhood. Her and her entire family were stuck in Nazi Germany while Adolf Hitler was still in power. For the continuing of the war, their family had o live in refugee/concentration camps. This book discusses how they survived during those hard times. After that the were able to migrate to the United States...this story is truly an amazing story showing courage and hope.

As a student of history, I have read a number of Holocaust stories (and am currently reading Night), and each one drives home the sad fact that people can be unspeakably cruel, and that this cruelness is so often off set by the incredible kindness of another. This dichotomy very much troubles me, and yet fills me with hope, because when I look at the balance I believe there are more people who are good, or are victims, or are silent than those who are evil. So the numbers seem to favor those who are not evil. Yet, the phenomenal amount of death and destruction and misery that is caused by the few that are evil is overwhelming. What bothers me as I read these stories is not so much the evil ones; I knew they existed during the Holocaust, and I know they exist now. What bothers me is the silent ones - an overwhelming number who could easily crush the evil ones, but who choose to remain silent. As the great parliamentarian Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." In every generation this lesson needs to be learned again.

The six-year ordeal of the Blumenthal family is chronicled in this memoir of Jewish life during the Holocaust from a little girl's perspective.

Don't sing before breakfast, don't sleep in the moonlight_ everyday superstitions and how they began by Lila Perl
Interesting stories of how others have rhymes that will turn their luck or give them back luck.
Liked the directions of the compass and the numbers and what they mean. Some silly rhymes and what they really mean.
Superstitions are taken apart to show they are not really bad luck.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

What, you say, is Hangtown Fry? “A mess of fried eggs, fried oysters, and bacon.” Because it was so expensive, ordering that breakfast meant that you’d struck it rich in the goldrush.

Because she covered so much territory, this is really more of an overview of the topic of food in the century of pioneer America. The country is covered in five succinct sections; at the end of each is a sampling of recipes. Because her chapters are descriptive of the contents, I share them here:

I Beyond the Southern Mountains
Pot Luck on the Kentucky Frontier
The Flowering of the Lower Mississippi Valley
The Creole Cookery of Louisiana
The Slave and Indian Communities of the South

II Across the Old Northwest to the Great Plains
Pioneer Routes to the Old Northwest
Settlers and Immigrants on the New Frontier
Meat-and-Potatoes Eating in German Ohio
The Appleseed Trail to Dutch Michigan
Swiss, Cornish, and Scandinavian Settlers in Wisconsin
Buffalo Hunters and Sodbusters of the Great Plains

III Along the Santa Fe Trail to the Southwest
Indian Foods of the American Southwest
The Culinary Gifts of the Spanish
Oklahoma Chuckwagon Days

IV Over the Rockies to the Far West
Mountain Men and Oregon Homesteaders
On the Trail of California Gold
The Chinese in San Francisco
Mediterranean Gardeners in Southern California’

V Pioneers in the Cities Back East
French Elegance in the Jefferson White House
Boston: Refuge from the Potato Famine
New York City as a Jewish Haven

An answer to a “why” from the title: Chinese immigrants continued to prepare their food for cooking in the same fashion as in their homeland – meats and vegetables finely cut and cooked quickly – even though there was no longer a scarcity of fuel.

It really is quite an interesting book, and apt to garner a higher rating the more I think on it. Recommended to those interested in aspects of American history.½

Perl has written a book that could interest some children in genealogy through the story she tells. However, the story may be misleading to some readers who think that the portraits used to introduce the subject in the beginning are their actual ancestors. She also tells the story of the Irish potato famine and immigrant plight to try to interest the readers. If you are looking for a book that will teach a child how to get started in genealogy, this is NOT the book. Other than a family group sheet and an appendix describing a few other resources, there is nothing there. Ultimately, there are better books out there to arouse the child's interest while teaching them a few basics. There are also better books to tell the stories of immigration and the Irish potato famine as well. If your library's genealogy collection for children is limited and includes this one, use it. Just be aware of its shortcomings and find ways to supplement the book.½

RGG: Concise, compelling telling of one Jewish family's efforts to escape Nazi Germany and emigrate to America, and who survive Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

Heartwrenching! This one is perfect for younger children, it doesn't sugarcoat, but it also doesn't give graphic detail, so kids can think and draw their own conclusions about how horrible the Holocaust was without being too sickened to want to read the story. A wonderful tale of survival and never giving up even when many obstacles are thrown in your path. A tale of family love that will make you appreciate what you have even more!

Marion was almost five years old when her family fled Germany for Holland. Despite the visas and tickets they had to immigrate to the United States, they were unable to leave Europe once the Germans invaded Holland. They then made arrangements to be part of a group immigrating to Palestine however, they were sent instead to Bergen-Belsen in the “family camp.” The family is able to stay together until her father dies of typhus several months after liberation.

I found this book a bit lackluster. The story alternates from Marion’s point of view and third person. Such intertwining of narration and first-person voice makes the story a bit bland and unemotional. Overall, this book lacks the intensity of other holocaust books.½

In the annals of man's cruelty to man, the Holocaust stands out for its sheer, industrial-scale coldness and horror. There is ample literature attesting to the awfulness of being condemned to death for the mere accident of being born to a Jewish parent. This book, another entry into that corwded segment, is aimed at young readers.

I don't know that any book about the Holocaust is something I want young readers to read. It's too huge and too vile a topic to make me feel comfortable introducing it to those whose lives are still in the vulnerable and bendable stage. I wouldn't let my child read this book, far better she should read the Marquis de Sade than this kind of material.

But the world disagrees with me. So I am renewedly glad that I have no young children. But I think this story is one that makes the idea of the Holocaust, its especial and unique evil in human history, more painfully poignantly real than any other literary work I've ever seen: This is the story of a child who went through the system with her family intact, until the bitter horrifying end of the tale. This is what the horrible, vile, evil, disgusting Germans wanted to destroy: A little girl, her mama, her papa, and her big brother.

Because they were Jews.

This is a story of frustrating missed opportunities. This is a story of hope. This is a story of courage.

Told in simplistic detail, the story contains the Blumenthal family of four who are moved on Hitler's chess board, forward, backward, sideways, down hill, uphill, on trains, in camps, with hope, with little hope, with denial and then with realization that to be stuck in Germany when your life is meaningless to the master holding the rule book equates to a harrowing game that you never agreed to play.

The author tells the tale of the Blumenthal journey that lasted six and 1/2 terrifying years.

Trapped in Hitler's Germany, the Blumenthal family were temporarily lucky to flee to Holland, but shortly thereafter that country was not safe. Through a series of unfortunate missed opportunities, they were sent to various refugee camps, and then back to Germany to Bergen Belsen. Six days before the British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen, the Blumenthals were transported like cattle to another location. Riding the typhus infested death train for two weeks, eventually they were liberated by Russian troops.

At the beginning of the Nazi occupation young Marion Blumenthal collected three perfect pebbles, superstitiously she believed if she found the fourth it would be a sign that their four family members would survive. Alas, Marion never found the fourth pebble.

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This was an interesting non-fiction text. I don't know how it would compare to other books on ancient Egypt, but this seems satisfactory. The pictures are appealing and helpful, and the text would be appropriate for older elementary students. This would also be appropriate as a high interest/ low ability reader.

This is a fun book to read as well as to cook from. We used it a lot in studying the history of California. There are not a lot of recipes in it.

This Holocaust narrative provides one family's experiences during WWII. Written in simple, but compleling, language, the author relates the horrors that she witnessed as her family was sent to the death camps and death trains. Aimed at young readers, the book contains very disturbing pictures which further highlight the author's recollections. However, occassionally the simplicity of the story seems to jump over parts of the history.

A story of a little girl's survival. She also goes into what life was like after the war.

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Memoir of the Holocaust