Challenging Content: Disabled people are killed because they don't fit with the idea of a superior race. ( )

Germany in 1939 was a lethal place, not only for the Jews. This is the story of Paula, a thirteen-year-old Deaf girl targeted by Hitler's program (called Tiergartenstrasse 4 or T4) mandating euthanasia of the mentally and physically disabled. The author pushes us into Paula's world with a balance of research and characterization. Paula learns from other fugitives about doctors and victims of T4, many of them historical personalities. Simultaneously, she tells her own story--a story of Deafness, coming of age, persecution, survival, and spirit--in moments of poignant, vibrant detail.

One could wish this story had been written in prose, fully fleshed out. "A Novel" isn't really accurate. This is more a collection of impressions and moments, and the frugal free verse is sometimes almost too sparse. Overall, for me, it works. The writer picked each image perfectly, from dark red lipstick "like the wing of a cardinal, or a fancy automobile" to a frozen forest "that looked like it was made of glass." She cites the grisly statistics of the T4 murders and quotes from an actual German bishop's sermon against it, but she also keeps the atrocities personal for Paula and those she encounters.

Ms. LeZotte manages to meld history's big picture and Paula's little story, the greatest challenge for historical fiction. History is nearer after one reads this book. This is a bright flare of a story, brighter for its brevity. It burns with the strong, straightforward voice of the Deaf and the spirit of all persecuted people. ( )

To see this review and to learn more about T4 please visit www.readrantrockandroll.com

T4 by Ann Claremont Lezotte is a book about Hitler's Tiergartenstrasse 4 or better known as T4, a Nazi program that ordered the death of all disabled and mentally ill people.

The story follows a little deaf girl named Paula Becker who lives with her family in Germany. Due to the T4 program during WWII, she has no choice but to leave her home and family to hide at the age of 13. The story continues on with her journey in search of safety.

I noticed that some people were leaving negative reviews because they didn't feel the book was poetic enough. I have to disagree. The book is told in free verse which isn't meant to rhyme or have any specific rhythm. It's meant to sound as though the person is speaking to you and that's exactly what the format delivers.

I personally liked it. I think it's really important for older kids to read this so that they will learn that the Holocaust didn't just involve killing Jews. There were many others that were killed and this book exposes the terror of this dark time.

I especially enjoyed the author's notes in the back as she explains where the names for the characters originated, info for further learning, and statistics. It's a fairly quick read at around 108 pages. I'm very happy to have this on my shelf.

4**** ( )

Quick read for an adult. Not what I was expecting ( )

Am I seriously a year behind in updating my "reading" list? Wow, I feel lousy. I'm dashing off short little reviews right now just to get the books off my shelf, but I'll go back and fix them eventually. Anyway, this was a kind of forgettable book that I read a whole year ago, so needless to say I don't remember much. It's told in verse, which basically means the short little book is even shorter than it looks because there's barely even a few sentences worth of words on each page. It's a book that's supposed to be deeply moving, telling the tale of a little girl who is disabled in some way I can't remember. It's the Holocaust, so she has to move from place to place and hiding spot to hiding spot to escape from the Nazis, who are putting all the disabled people in concentration camps. This angle of that horrible time definitely needs to be addressed more, because people always forget about the minorities when they just see the Jews during the Holocaust. But despite its compelling topic, and its attempt to be moving, I read it in half an hour and moved on. It really didn't leave any lasting impact. ( )