No Pretty Pictures a child of war (Blog 4)

The book I am reading is called No Pretty Pictures a child of war by Anita Lobel. Anita is the who writes the story. She talks about her past of when she lived in the times of World War II. She went through a lot back in those days. Her father escaped to Russia when she was little. Her mother was still with her but she just hid her background and got false papers. Pretty much all their years, before Anita and her brother were found, they were mostly with their Nanny (Niana). For five years, they traveled a lot with her to many places. Niana was the only person who they can put their trust on because she tried her best to keep them both safe from the Nazis.
While I was reading this book I thought about the signpost 'Tough Questions'.  Anita asked herself the question 'Is Niana really going to come back?' frequently. This made me truly think about how bad Anita wished she was with her nanny. It made me wonder how on earth was Niana going to cope with the thought of the two kids being stuck in a concentration camp. How did Niana really feel deep inside? Although it seems impossible that Niana would come back to them, I could predict that she would have done anything and risked anything for them.

Summary and Plot (Blog 3)

The book I started to read this week is called The Distance Between Us. The first couple pages that I have read, the book has taken place in a doll store. The main character, Caymen, works in her moms doll store and spends most her time here when she is not in school. Caymen is a young open-minded girl who is very sarcastic with everyone. One of her only friend, Skye, which supports her in everything she does. So far in the book there has not been any big events yet.
I do not know what the plot is in the story yet but I can make a prediction about it. I think that Caymen is going to fall in love with one of her customers that visited her store. In the story a guy comes in and buys a doll from the doll store. She says that he seemed very attractive but the problem in the story seems that its going to be that the guy is going to be greedy (because he is rich and gives money to much attention). So Caymen will have to cope with him acting like this. This is all I can predict since I have not crossed the plot yet.

No Pretty Pictures Blog 5

No Pictures ends in an amazing way. Anita and her little brother end up surviving the concentration camps they were in. When the war ended, Anita was fifteen (when it started she was 5). Her mother and father also survived. When it all ended, the whole family moved to Sweden to recover at the end of the war, then they came over to America. The sad part about the ending that I didn't like was that on day when they were in Sweden, they received a letter from the sister of their Nanny, Niana, and the letter had said that Niana had died from a brain tumor. Although Anita was very sad, Niana had also sent her a present for Anita, which was a doll. 

I can connect to this book because on the Holocaust Museum Field Trip, the man who let my group through the tour was also a survivor like Anita. He was even the same age as her when the war started. Both stories have things in common to what they experienced with the Nazis while they were kids. This has nothing to do with this but the field trip was a lot of fun and I learned lots. Thank you Ms. Belkov! 

Holocaust Blog

I believe that many people stood by and watched the holocaust happen because they were too terrified to do anything about it. While reading my lit circle book I noticed that many of the Jews didn't do anything about them being taken to concentration camps or being tortured horribly. One of the main characters in the story I'm reading, Anita, is taken to a camp along with her little brother. As they go through living their days there, I can see that they go through the worst things you can imagine. So, I believe that this could be a reason why Jews did not stand up and became up-standers.
There were also people that did stand up for what they believed.  In my book, there was a woman who stood up to the Nazis and fought for her son to get him back with her because the Nazis had taken him away since he was younger than everyone else. She did take a risky move but she believed she should do anything to save her son. In my opinion, she was a brave and strong up-stander.
I really don't know what I would have done if I were in their shoes. I'm pretty sure I would have been a bystander and do whatever the Nazis order me to do. If I'm scared to be an up stander in easy everyday life problems today, Im sure I wouldn't have done anything especially since I know that the Nazis were very mean and didn't care about anyone but themselves.