Yolen, Jane. (2004). The Devil's Arithmetic. New York: Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. 176 pp.

Grade Range: 6-9

Genre: historical fiction

Summary and Critique

This novel begins with the main character, Hannah, in modern times at Passover with her family. She is apathetic toward her grandfather's stories about his time spent in a concentration camp. However, when she opens the door to symbolically greet Elijah, she is whisked away to a rural village in Poland during WWII. After some feeble attempts to explain who she is, she gives up and accepts that she is now Chaya, a Jewish peasant girl. As her adventure continues, she realizes she is in the year 1942 and about to be taken to a concentration camp. After many trials, she ends up offering her life to save another girl. In the next instant, she finds herself back at home staring blankly out the door she had opened for Elijah. She now understands the heartache and pain her grandfather had experienced.

This novel is provides a realistic presentation of life in a concentration camp without being so gruesome that a younger audience could not read and appreciate it. Yolen does an excellent job of connecting the past and future, as students will be able to identify with Hannah's longings for modern comforts.

Awards

National Jewish Book Award

Association of Jewish Libraries Award

Themes/Topics

Families

Friends and Enemies

Generations

Race, Ethnicity, and Culture

Adventure

The Holocaust

War and Peace

Author

Jane Yolen was born in New York on February 11, 1939. She later moved to Connecticut where she was the editor for her high school newspaper. She has written novels, poetry, songbooks, and even comic books. Yolen has three children and several grandchildren and currently resides in Massachusetts with her husband.

For more information on Jane Yolen:

http://www.janeyolen.com/ Yolen's official homepage.

Media Connections

Movies

Back to the Future (1985) Time travel story about a teenager in the 1980s who goes back in time, where he must correct several problems that he caused.

The Neverending Story (1984) Sebastian finds a book that literally comes to life when he is transported into the story. He has to solve the riddle of finding a name for the child-like empress in order to save the fantasy world.

Schindler's List (1993) About the changes Oskar Schindler, a German businessman, experiences during WWII while Nazis are in power.

Big Fish (2003) A man visits his dying father in order to hear one true story (as opposed to the usual tall tale) from his father before his father dies.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) In this Cinderella type comedy, Toula, a thirty-something year-old woman from a traditional Greek family, meets and falls in love with a non-Greek man.

Television

Quantum Leap A scientist's time-travel experiment goes awry, and he experiences a variety of situations from a variety of perspectives.

Music

"Universal Soldier." Lyrics by Buffy Sainte-Marie, Performed by Donovan in 1965. Troubadour: The Definitive Collection 1964-1976. Sony, 1992. This is a song about different races and how we are all fighting for different causes. It has a theme of peace and unity.

Online Resources

http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org Stories of Holocaust survivors. There are powerful and somewhat graphic pictures from the Holocaust available on this site.

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust A teacher's guide to the Holocaust. This has links to Holocaust-related photography.

http://www.col-ed.org/cur Provides lesson plans for a variety of grades and subjects.

http://home.cogeco.ca/~rayser3/index.htm An excellent source for lesson ideas.

http://www.hmh.org/ Official Web site for the Holocaust Museum in Houston. There are also links to other Holocaust Web Sites.

Related Texts

Taylor, Mildred. (1976). Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry New York: Dial Press. 276pp. Cassie, a twelve-year old girl, comes of age in a small 1930's Mississippi town filled with racism, hatred, injustice, and poverty.

Matas, Carol. (1993). Daniel's Story. New York: Scholastic. 136pp. Matas presents the life of a Jewish teenager before, during, and after the Holocaust using both photographs and text.

Curtis, Christopher Paul. (1995). The Watsons go to Birmingham-1963. New York: Delacorte Press. 210pp. An African American family from Michigan spends the summer in the Deep South in the year 1963.

Lowry, Lois. (1989). Number the Stars. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 137pp. The Johannesen family hides Jewish friends until the friends can escape to Sweden.

Sachar, Louis. (1998). Holes. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. 233pp. A teenage boy is accused of stealing a pair of shoes, and for punishment he must work in a bizarre juvenile detention center/labor camp.

Teaching Ideas

(1) "News and Novels" Student should find a news article that reminds them of some aspect of the reading. They should cut out the article, glue it to a sheet of paper, and write an explanation of how the reading connects to the article. This is a good activity because the students will practice writing and make a connection between the text and their lives.

[Summarized/adapted from "Literature Meets Life" by Marcia Fisher in Notes Plus. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. January 1997. p. 1.]

(2) "Peer Reviewing Poetry" Each English class in the school will work on a poetry portfolio. At the end of the unit, the classes will participate in a peer review. The teachers will model by peer reviewing other teachers'poetry. Then the students will evaluate each others'work. In addition to giving both students and teachers an opportunity to work together, this activity will hopefully make the idea of writing and analyzing poetry less scary for the students.

[Summarized/adapted from "Teachers and Students Modeling Peer Revision" by Karen Fatula Forgette and Debbie Pfetzing in Notes Plus. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. October 1996. p. 1.]

(3) "Culture Bubbling" Students should go to a place where they feel comfortable. While there, students should observe people and their interactions. Students should create a bubble cluster to record their observations. The center bubble should contain the name of the place, and the outer bubbles should contain information describing the people who go there, what people do, what it looks like, etc. Once students have completed their bubbles, they will write a story that is set or surrounded by this culture. This exercise helps students better understand the importance of developing setting and characters.

[Summarized/adapted from "Exploring Cultures Through Writing" by Garth Sundem in Notes Plus. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. April 2003. pp. 2-3.]

(Review written by Kimberly Hardy and edited by Jennifer E. Moore)