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Description of  When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers

An NPR Best Book of the Year A Washington Post Best Book of the Year A Chicago Tribune Fall "Best Read" An Alma most anticipated book of November From the prize-winning author of The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, a stunning graphic narrative of newly discovered stories from Jewish teens on the cusp of WWII. is cartoonist Ken Krimsteins new graphic nonfiction book, based on six of hundreds of newly discovered, never-before-published autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish teens on the brink of WWIIfound in 2017 hidden in a Lithuanian church cellar. These autobiographies, long thought destroyed by the Nazis, were written as entries for three competitions held in Eastern Europe in the 1930s, just before the horror of the Holocaust forever altered the lives of the young people who wrote them. In , Krimstein shows us the stories of these six young men and women in riveting, almost cinematic narratives, full of humor, yearning, ambition, and all the angst of the teenage years. Its as if half a dozen new Anne Frank stories have suddenly come to light, framed by the dramatic story of the documents rediscovery. Beautifully illustrated, heart-wrenching, and bursting with life, reveals how the tragedy that is about to befall these young people could easily happen again, to any of us, if we dont learn to listen to the voices from the past. Read more