Student Book Review
Title: I
Have Lived a Thousand Years
Author:
Livia Bitton-Jackson
Genre:
Autobiography
Publisher:
Scholastic
Place of
Publication: New York, NY
Copyright:
1997
Number of
Pages: 216
Summary:
This tragic story is told by a 13 year old Jewish
girl named Elli who lives with her mother, father, and brother Bubi, in
Sonorja, Czechlosovakia. Elli goes to a
public school with both Jewish and non Jewish kids. Bubi goes to a very good private school in Budapest. This is a story of loss, killing, hatred,
and sadness. Their family, along with
five-hundred other families, is sent to live in a ghetto. Their family is separated and the only ones
who manage to stay together are Elli and her mom. They stick together and somehow they make it through everything:
the gas chambers, the random shootings and killings, the starvation, and the
beatings. They finally meet up with
Bubi at one of the camps that they are sent to but he is very weak and can
hardly walk. I don’t want to give away the end of the
story, but you must read it to find out what happens!
Review:
There were times when I was reading this
book that I had to set it down for a second because it was just too gruesome to
read. There were other times when I
couldn’t put it
down and stop reading because it was so interesting. Even though this book is very sad, it taught me a lot about the
Holocaust. I learned what really
happened in the Holocaust. This book
didn’t just
say that the Germans killed a ton of Jews, it actually explained what happened
and how they did it even though sometimes that wasn’t always the best thing. There were gas chambers, beatings,
shootings, and many other ways. It was
facts inside of a story so that I understood what happened and what people had
to go through. I highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about the
Holocaust in a way that you can understand.
* Don’t Bother ****Worth staying up late for
**Better
than doing homework *****Great!!!!
*** Not Bad!!!
Reviewer: Lily B.
House: Blue 7
Teacher: Mrs. Santiago
Date: 11/22/05