Thriver / Mendel Rosenberg / 79 pages

What drew me to this book is that the author lived in St. Louis when he wrote this book.  Mendel Rosenberg lived with his family in Lithuania.  When the Germans invaded Lithuania in World War II the Rosenberg family was forced to move to the ghetto created for Jews in 1941.  Mendel was 14 years old at the time. Eventually the family is transferred to concentration camps.  Mendel's father, grandmother, and brother do not survive the war.  Only Mendel and his mother survive.  The author does a good job telling his story of his life surviving WW II and what he did after the war.

Between Shades of Gray / Ruta Sepetys / 338 pgs / Audiobook / Historical Fiction

"Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously - and at great risk - documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but [with] incredible strength, love, and hope..."

Wow. I have trouble gathering all of my thoughts on this book, because it's very powerful. There's so much about Stalin's rule that I never learned--that I think a lot of Americans have never learned--and this story is an example of that. I'm grateful to the author for writing about the Lithuanian people and their treatment at the hands of the Soviets. This is the story of her ancestors, and she chose to share it in a way that adults and young adults alike could read. Beautifully written and utterly tragic. I enjoyed the incorporation of Russian words into book and the meaning behind them. This is a book about mistreatment and survival, as well as love and grace in the face of starvation and death. It is about history, friends, family, pity, and respect. It is about so many things that I can't communicate. Let me just say that I cried and I felt as though my heart was being torn up, but it was worth it. Read this book.