Tell Me Another Morning: An Autobiographical Novel

Synopsis

Everyone who loves the Diary of Anne Frank will cherish this magnificent, spare, and devastating novel.

KLIATT

This autobiographical novel is based on the author's experience as a young girl in Prague during WW II. She and her family are taken from their home and sent to a labor camp. Her older brother is sent to another camp and killed. Tania tells of her experiences in the camp. She befriends an older girl, Ilse, who works in the kitchen and is able to get her extra food. After they move to another camp, Ilse's survival skills help them. When they are forced to go through another selection line, Ilse finds an old tube of lipstick that she uses on Tania's mother's cheeks to make her look healthier. When Tania's father is not chosen to go with them to the next camp, a situation that means death for him, her mother chooses to stay with him, and Tania and Ilse leave them behind. After liberation, Tania finds her only living relative in Prague, her Aunt Magda, and tries to resume life. When she visits the Jewish cemetery, she sees that her grandfather's headstone now bears the names of her entire family. Although the author wrote this story in 1961, it has been updated in 2007 and ends with the author writing that she has lived in three great cities—Prague, Paris and San Francisco—and is still in touch with Isle. Unfortunately, Tania's story is not unusual, but the spare prose and seeing the world through Tania's eyes will make this book appealing to the YA reader.