What the Night Sings

The violence Gerta witnesses and writes about (even though not described in graphic detail) is often unimaginable. Women, children, and babies are shot and beaten to death. Bodies are stacked in carts and left on the street. People die packed into railroad cars. Families are separated and sent to die in the gas chambers.

A few kisses. A very brief (and not at all graphic) description of a couple on their wedding night.

Several mentions that an adult character is drinking whiskey or smoking.

Parents need to know that What the Night Sings is a novel told through the voice of Gerta Rausch, a teen Holocaust survivor who’s struggling to rebuild her life while living in a displaced persons camp in Germany. For Gerta, that struggle includes discovering her true identity. Her father had kept a secret from her: They were Jewish, which Gerta learned only after they were betrayed to the Nazis. The story moves from Gerta's childhood in Germany, through her years as a prisoner in three Nazi concentration camps, to the new life she forges for herself. This is a part of the Holocaust story rarely told: life after liberation for survivors who found themselves without a home or a country to which they could return. For readers who've studied the Holocaust, the violence (children being beaten and shot, people dying in packed railroad cars, the gas chambers) will be grimly familiar. For others, despite the matter-of-fact way it's recounted, the violence may be disturbing. Author Vesper Stamper is also the illustrator, and the book is filled with haunting sepia-toned images that add a powerful graphic novel quality to the story.