The Story of Bodri

Starred review from March 15, 2021
A young girl is "a happy child in a happy place" until everything changes. H�di lives in a little town in Hungary with her parents, her sister, Livia, and her dog, Bodri. She shares secrets and fun with her best friend, Marika. H�di is Jewish and Marika is Christian, and that has not made a difference in their friendship. When Hitler's frightening, hate-filled voice is heard, H�di's parents try to reassure the children. But the soldiers come and bring a new reality. "Hitler hated me and my family because we were Jewish." Restrictions force H�di's family to stay indoors, always hoping things would get better, but of course they never did. They're rounded up and put on a train for the camps. Dreaming of Bodri throughout her captivity keeps H�di from total despair as the many months pass. Her parents are gone; she and her sister, their heads shaved, are hungry, cold, and filthy. The sisters survive and are miraculously reunited with faithful Bodri. In a brief introduction, Fried warns that her story is difficult for her to tell, but readers must listen. She speaks to a young audience in carefully chosen language, skillfully translated from Swedish by Schenck, telling just enough of the horrors to help them to a modicum of understanding in the hope that they will always choose good over evil. Wirs�n's liquid watercolors perfectly invoke that time and place and its emotional upheaval. Never again. True and powerful in its simplicity. (Picture book/memoir. 6-12)

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March 15, 2021
Grades 2-4 Creating Holocaust-themed picture books for young children is difficult. Fried's attempt, translated from Swedish, is fictional but based on her own life as a Holocaust survivor. It was inspired by a child who attended one of her lectures and asked what became of her dog, Bodri, while she was in Auschwitz, among other death camps. The focus on life before the war, and on Bodri's presence as a loyal friend, somewhat mitigates the harshness of what happened to the author and her sister. Only a few bleak wartime spot illustrations--black drawings of Hitler and soldiers colored with dark splotches of gray--infringe on Wirs�n's delicate watercolors. Leafy trees add constancy, portraying nature as well as the passage of time. Bodri, a large, friendly-looking red dog, is a symbol of hope, waiting beneath the seasonally changing tree until reuniting with Fried after the war. This book walks the edge of what children can absorb about historical tragedies, while maintaining an outcome that is not too Pollyanna-ish, and it does this well.

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