We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin

Lisa is Jewish six year old growing up in Hungary on the eve of WWII. Her mother Esther goes to great lengths to ensure their survival while Lisa's father fights in the Hungarian army. While much of this is told from Lisa's perspective, this story is really Esther's.

I find that I'm having a hard time summarizing this book. I think it's such a different perspective of the war and yet so encompassing of what people would go through to survive. Miriam Katin has done something very special with this. The character of Lisa is actually based off of Miriam Katin's own experiences during WWII, and she builds this memoir off of her own memories, the stories that she was told by her mother, and the letters shared between her mother and father. Esther was obviously a remarkable woman, which comes across so strongly through the illustrations. This is one of those times where you can't envision the book being told any other way and it having the intense impact that comes across through this book. I've read many different biographies and memoirs of WWII, and this one is definitely up the ranks with Maus by Art Spiegelman and Night by Elie Wiesel.

The Diary of Piper Davis: The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson

I was all sorts of excited when I saw that Dear America was going to be publishing more fictional diaries of girls from different time periods in America. I loved the Dear America series. I had practically all of them. And a couple of the boy equivalents, My America, which I don't think was as popular.

Piper Davis is the daughter of a minister in Seattle, Washington during 1941. Her father's congregation is all from Japantown, and while Piper spends Sundays with those of Japanese descent, her close friends are her school friends, who are all white, as she is.

Piper's beloved brother, Hank, has just joined the navy and has been stationed in Hawaii. You can probably see where this is going. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor is attacked, and although Piper's brother is unharmed, America is now involved in WWII, and everything changes.

People begin to turn on the Japanese citizens, even those who were born in America. Piper is conflicted, she's worried about her brother and would do anything to protect him, but it doesn't seem right to mistreat the Japanese-American people. When all people of Japanese descent are deported to camps, Piper's father decides to follow his congregation, taking Piper with him.