Good evening. I was not able to post for a long time as I was occupied with my schoolwork. But today, I am back with yet another book review. Also, today I am reviewing new genre; a graphic novel which also contains a lot of non-fiction. The name of the book is White Bird. This is written and illustrated by none other than R.J Palacio. There are 2 main characters: one of which is Julian, who is also a main character in the book Wonder, also written by R.J Palacio. The other character is Sara Blum, Julian’s grandmother.

The story starts with a Face-Time call where Julian calls his grandmother for his humanities project where he had to write an essay about someone he knew. So, he calls his grandma. His grandmother starts by telling him about Hitler who was not allowing Jews to a lot of public places and how she got affected being a Jew. As a young girl, Sara loved to doodle and mostly drew birds as she would imagine herself flying from the harsh conditions of the Nazis. She always doodled in her math period as she did not like it much, though her mother was a math teacher. She had a classmate who was called ‘tourteau’, (which means crab in French), because he had polio. Because of this, he was bullied a lot and kids never talked with him.

One day, during her school time, her class-teacher had asked Sara and one of her classmates to come out as a few of German troops were coming to check the school, and the principal didn’t want the Jewish kids to be taken with them. But Sara went and hid near the school bell when her teacher asked her to run. No-one knew that she was hiding near the school bell. Eventually, she stayed there for about 2 hours. Then, suddenly, she saw someone entering the room where she had been; it was Tourteau. He saw her and tried to rescue her. He took her through some very unknown woods, sewages. At last, they reached his house where she met his parents. They hide her in their barn. Then she learns that Tourteau’s actual name was Julien Beaumier.

She stays in the barn for about 4-5 years without her parents and only Julien and his parents. Once, one of her other schoolmates follows Julien and arrives at the barn. Sara gets alarmed and hides. Julien manages him but gets injured badly. It indeed was a close shave. Eventually, Sara and Julien become remarkably close and the best of friends. The rest of the story lies in whether Sara meets her parents and whether Julien lives out safe.

I first read about world war 2 in yet another graphic novel, The Diary of Anne Frank. Through this book, I took a deeper thought about it. If I were in the place of Sara, I really would have been very grateful to have a friend like Julien. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves graphic novels and nonfiction. It was an enthralling experience for me to read this book. How would you feel if a situation like this came keeping in mind the current COVID-19 situation? Let me know in the comments below 🙂

The Holocaust, also called the Shoah, was the period between 1941 and 1945 when the Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around 6 million Jews(⅔ of European Jewish population) This was a very tough time for the Jews as they were sent to concentration camps and most of them died due to poor sanitation and jaundice.

I hope you all enjoyed the review! Drop in your thoughts at: shre.mani07@gmail.com