Review by Anna     
    Although this book may only seem as if it is about darkness, death, and hatred, it has much more meaning then that. I believe that this book shows the true meaning about bravery, and love and affection a person can give to their family and friends. It shows how people come together as one, and fight for something that they want, and desire. Taking place during the Holocaust, here is a young girl’s story.
    You have a young Jewish girl, Seren Tuvel, and all she wants to do is study to get a good education and live life how she wants to. Being the smartest student, she wins a scholarship to Bucharest. Here is one event that might lead Seren to her bright future that she always wanted. However, she is quite wrong with her future; it ends up spinning the opposite direction. All she learns from her schoolteacher is how you need to hate Jews. Jews equal evil, dirty, and they’re all dirty animals. Embarrassed, when she threw a bottle of ink at the priest’s head after she was tired of his false words, she decides to become a seamstress and take matters in her own hand.
    As time passes, you travel with Seren to the horrors of the concentration camps. There, you see what it is like when she loses her closet friends, witnesses death, and faces the greatest challenges in her life time.
    Sara Tuvel Bernstein has a knack for using words that are so powerful yet descriptive you feel as if you’re watching the scene right before your eyes. It creates a horrible, unbearable event into a beautifully written piece of literature. As you read more deeply into the book, you bond with Seren so easily. You see things through her eyes, you feel her loss and pain, and you gain her bravery and heroism. This book will really keep you yearning for more.
    I recommend this book to all teenagers, and even parents. I read this book to remind myself what these people went through. These unimaginable events didn’t last for one day, they lasted for years. I see love, compassion, bravery in a place where the darkest moments took place. Something I know that I wouldn’t be able to handle. If you want a book with both the gloomy, and the glory, then this is the book to read. I’m definite that you will love this book, I sure did.