I read this book way too young as a child and it influenced how i thought about ww2 and the holocaust growing up. As you can guess from the description its heavy but very good. ( )

This memoir follows Piri, a young girl in a mid-to-lower class Jewish family living in Hungary during WWII, through hearing rumors of mistreatment of Jews in other areas, to being evacuated from their home and moved into a ghetto, and ends with them being packed into the train headed for Auschwitz. It's sad and moving and terrifying, and, I think, one of the more mature picks for the Newbery Honor list I've read (which are generally books aimed at middle grade readers - I'd put this one firmly in the YA category). Guardedly recommended - it's certainly not a happy read, but fairly well done for what it is. ( )

I've been putting off writing this review because I've been debating on whether to rate it a 2 or a 3. I had thought I had settled on a 3 until I wrote my review and realized that a 2 more accurately portrays my feelings.

I honestly was disappointed in, first, the execution of the story. I felt like it was bogged down with sooo many extraneous, and very unnecessary details (i.e. we learn all about when one of the characters start their period) yet its missing a lot of, what I thought, are the more important parts of their story (i.e. we aren't told anything about their time in Auschwitz?)

It left me wishing that the book had a good editor and wondering if it was dumbed down because it's meant to be a kids story or because certain periods of time were too difficult for the author to rehash??

I also felt like this story was very flat. Even though I do have sympathy for what they went through and endured, I felt like this book did nothing to envoke those emotions from me.

My son and I read this book together as one of his required 6th grade, Newberry Award and Honor reading books and he didn't enjoy it very much either. It's a difficult book to read, especially for kids, with the Hungarian names and the way the story is written. It's really not a good book to introduce your children to the German occupation and Holocaust. I want my son to really understand what happened and feel something when he learns about the Holocaust and this book just didn't do that for either of us. ( )

A 1982 Newbery honor book regarding the holocaust, this is written about events leading up to the deportation of the author's family to Auschwitz in 1944.

Happy and carefree, Piri spends summers with her grandmother in Beregszasz. During 1939 sudden changes occur as it appears the nation is in the debt of Adolf Hitler. Unable to return to Hungary because the borders are closed, we watch as increasingly the slovac nations are swallowed up by Germany.

When Peri is able to return to her family, she learns her father is now in the military and destined for the Russian front.

There is a slowness throughout the story as day by day, little by little, Germany's Hitler becomes increasingly bent on the destruction of the Jews.

Unlike some other holocaust books, this one focuses on events as they unfold, almost in a slow-motion fashion time stands still and then moves a little faster, faster, faster toward the enevitability of destruction.

Recommended. ( )

Upon the Head of the Goat is the memoir of a young Hungarian girl who grew up during the beginning of World War II. The story chronicles her life in three locations, which underscore the events in history. She begins in the Ukrainian countryside, where she is open and free with her grandmother, then moves with her mother to the more closed in city in Hungary as events and atrocities begin to intensify, and finally to the ghetto where all of the Jewish families are thrown into close quarters and squalor to await an unknown fate.

This book differs from many holocaust era memoirs in that it transpires entirely during the buildup of events, and does not describe the authors experiences in a concentration camp or similar situations. Because of this, it provides a more relatable story for the average reader who can never truly empathize with holocaust suffering.

This book does not standout as the most memorable of book I have read of the genre. Perhaps because the author does not seem concerned with time passing as a frame of reference, which makes it sometimes hard to keep in mind exactly how old the author is, or the other characters are in relation to her.

The reading level is not too advanced, and it does not aim to deliberately shock the sensibilities, making it an appropriate read for a younger, perhaps middle school level, audience. ( )