Hidden

Elsa wakes up in the middle of the night to find her grandmother thinking about her childhood in France, when the Nazis came to power. Dounia tells Elsa about her experiences: hiding and not being able to make a sound for fear of discovery, her parents being taken away, being taken in by non-Jewish neighbors, escaping to a farm and pretending to be Catholic, and the eventual return of her mother from a concentration camp. As an introduction to the Holocaust for young readers, this graphic novel gives the right amount of detail for children of this age – appropriately disturbing, but it won’t give them nightmares – while also showing enough kindness by adults and even moments of happiness in Dounia’s time in the country to give the book a hopeful tone. The illustrations, with large round heads and small bodies, add a suitably childlike quality.