Yellow Star is written by Jennifer Roy and the book’s copyright date is 2006 under the genre of Global Issues. In Yellow Star, Roy reveals the social issues which plagued society in the 1940s.
I would definitely recommend Yellow Star to my fellow middle school students. Although Yellow Star is not packed with action and suspense, Jennifer Roy dove deeply into the emotional aspect of Sylvia’s story. Written in the first person narrator, Yellow Star is able to envelope the reader and provide him/her with an experience from more than half a century ago. This novel is written in a way that is like no other. While reading this book, the reader feels a sensation as if he/she is looking through Sylvia’s eyes at the horrors and disbelief unraveling in , hadthe world around her. Yellow Star has a large spectrum of emotions packed into the story-line of a mere child. Jennifer Roy presents Sylvia’s story in a way that most everyone can relate to in one way or another. In the novel, Sylvia suffers from fear and depression as her life is in danger, while also acquiring a bond of love between her and the other members of her family, as they risk their very lives in hopes of saving hers. Roy did a fabulous job with her first hand account of the horrid ghettos many Jewish families lived in (against their will) during the duration of WWII, before being sent to concentration camps where Adolf Hitler’s dream of a superior race was on the brink of becoming a reality.
Syvia (now called Sylvia), was an average child – a petite, timid girl who was barely five with not a single fear or concern in the world… that was about to be change. Sylvia along with her sister Dora and both of their parents, were forced out of their modest lifestyle when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. After leaving their residence, Sylvia’s family is then forced into an all-Jewish ghetto with no available contact to the world outside the barbwire fences of the ghetto. Sylvia is forced to bare the horrors that lay before her, while enclosed beneath the militarized and controlled place her family must now call home. With death and destruction at every turn, Sylvia is not allowed to leave her house and is forced to stay inside for months at a time.
If you or a friend are searching for a gripping and powerful novel that pulls at your heart-strings, make sure to pick up Yellow Star. If you are studying World War II this book will show you how these events in history affected and shaped different people’s lives, for you can not fully understand history without understanding the people who have lived through it. Yellow Star provides a moving and factual point of view to one of the worlds most horrific times in history. Overall, Yellow Star is a spectacular yet quick read; I definitely recommend this novel to anyone of any age.