The Devils Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

The Devils Arithmetic Reviews

• 
  Christine

  This semester I am requiring my students to read The True Story of Hansel and Gretel, a novel takes place in Poland during World War II. The good news is that my students love the book; in fact, several of them are reading ahead.
  
  The shocking fact, the bad news, is what they don’t know. It is not just knowledge of history that they lack; it is knowledge of basic geography.
  
  God bless PowerPoint and blackboard.
  
  To be fair, my students do ask intelligent questions, yet the lack of basic knowledge is shocking. At times, I feel like I am teaching a culture and history course in addition to a reading skills course.
  
  Now, I don’t think it is the students’ fault. I think the fault lies with the schools as well as parents and special interest groups. Here’s why.
  
  There is a group called PABBIS (Parents against Bad Books in Schools). I disagree with them on so many different levels, but their website does have two good features. It actually quotes the material they find objectionable, and it has a complete list of banned and challenged books (as recent as 4-5 years ago).
  
  The Devil’s Arithmetic is on that list by the way.
  
  Everything by Stephen King makes the list. Everything by Dahl, Blume, Block. There are a few Black Stallion books on the list as is Black Beauty, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Three to Tango, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Lorax, and Shakespeare.
  
  In other words, pretty much anything good.
  
  Lately, history and science text books have been subjected to strange changes (i.e. as in Texas) and warning labels (usually about evolution).
  
  In terms banning and challenging books, I might under the idea if the book was being assigned at an inappropriate grade level, say Beloved to first graders. Why an exceptional first grader might not have a problem with such a book, there are several things wrong, in general, about such assignment, least of which is the subject matter. Yet, I have never heard of such an assignment. Age appropriateness isn’t really the issue. It seems to rest on what might offend any group, anywhere.
  
  Take, for instance, The Diary of Anne Frank. This book has been banned, challenged, and rejected by parents and text book committees because of the sex and tragedy of the story.
  
  Raisin in the Sun has been banned and challenged because it’s pornographic. (Can someone please, please show me where?).
  
  I can certainly see why The Devil’s Arithmetic is banned. It is the mention of a wedding.
  
  Blatantly heterosexual.
  
  Okay, it’s most likely due to the violence (it’s about the Holocaust) and the ending. Romeo and Juliet was dissed by a teacher who said it was a blatant endorsement of heterosexual love (so I guess teen suicide is okay).
  
  BUT, Yolen’s magnificent book is exactly the type of book that should be used in schools.
  
  Let’s face it, the wrong text book and/or the wrong teacher can make history very boring, and sometimes people just don’t like learning about history for a variety of reasons. This is the reason why good historical fiction should be used in schools. A good historical novel can get a reader interested in a period, in an event, in a person. This true, to a degree, of such less accurate work than The Devil’s Arithmetic. 300 caused some people to become interested in the Spartans, Titanic in the actual ship. In terms of books, vampire novels and historical fiction, such as The Other Boleyn Girl also cause readers to become interested in the actual events or myths that the novel is based on. Curiosity and a desire to learn are fueled by a variety of things; interest is one of them.
  
  The Devil’s Arithmetic is precisely the type of book that for young readers can help history seem more real and, perhaps, get a reader interested in history. Yolen does not talk down to her readers, her main character is sympathetic, an older sibling, and because Yolen doesn’t pull her punches, it is a real history, not a feel good history. This makes the story far more compelling and interesting. The story is told actively and quickly. Words are not wasted. The reader learns but is not lectured to and screamed at.
  
  Because of this reality and vividness, parents object to the story, and this raises the question of whether teachers and parents should sugarcoat history. It’s true that are plenty of novels and movies that present history in a more flattering light (look at the perfect teeth, the clean bodies, the small pox vaccination scars). A reader can quite easily find it in any average romance novel. Such writing does serve a sense of purpose, escapism, and there is nothing wrong with that.
  
  But that is not education.
  
  Is this what parents want a school to be?
  
  I hope not. I suppose it is easy for me to comment on
  appropriateness and the evil of banning because I don’t have a child, and I was raised in a house where you were encouraged to read what you wanted. I see, however, the effects of banning and challenging which are a total lack of knowledge or, worse, a lack of interest about a subject because the subject has been taught in such a sterile environment, so devoid of any color or shading, where everything is the color and taste of sugar; where everyone in the world has always treated everyone with respect and love, where women always had the right to vote, and slavery only existed in North and South America, and was totally destroyed by the American Civil War.
  
  Good literature, of which The Devil’s Arithmetic is a prime example forces its readers to examine their own knowledge and lack of knowledge, forces readers to think about their own responses, notions, and stereotypes. Good literature teaches or enlightens the reader even if the reader already knows. It is a bond between writer, book, and reader that is no less real than those ties of family and society that provide the excuse for book banning.
  
• 
  Meaghan

  I wish I could say I liked this book. I thought I would. I know it's critically acclaimed and a well-known story. But it left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
  
  The book is meant to educate young people about the Holocaust, but it had a lot of historical inaccuracies. The idyllic shtetl world at the beginning of Chaya's story would have been long gone by 1942 -- by that time, all the Jews left alive in Poland were in ghettos, in concentration camps or in hiding. Lublin, the place Chaya supposedly came from, was ghettoized and in early 1942, most of its Jewish population was deported to Belzec and killed.
  
  The dialogue was overly didactic (a common flaw in historical novels, especially those for children) and too much was told rather than shown. Further, the camp confused me. Yolen says in the end that she created an amalgam fictional camp out of various aspects of real camps, but she used the trademark Auschwitz sign: "Arbeit Macht Frei." I was confused throughout the book: This is Auschwitz? But where are the selections, the band, Mengele? Did she do any research at all, I wondered. Yolen should have revealed her use of a made-up camp at the beginning, and she shouldn't have used the Auschwitz sign.
  
  If you want to look for some better books on the Holocaust for children, try any of Uri Orlev's, or Jerry Spinelli's
  Milkweed, or Livia Bitton-Jackson's memoir
  I Have Lived a Thousand Years, or...well, quite a few books are better than this one.
• 
  Elsa Rajan Pradhananga

  I was 14 when I read my first holocaust book – Leon Uris’ Mila 18 and was in much distress for very long because of the Nazi savagery and Jewish despondency I was exposed to in the book. Although I have since been drawn to literature from that period, I feel that the gory in The Devil’s Arithmetic is too harsh for anyone under 12. The heart rending portrayal of children in Mapping the Bones, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Anne Frank’s Diary, The Book Thief, The girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List… make sure that the atrocities that children were subjected to during the holocaust are never forgotten.
  
  In The Devil’s Arithmetic when during the Passover, Hanna from 1990s’ New York opens the door of her grandparents’ apartment to look for Prophet Elijah, she finds herself in Poland of 1941 as Chaya. The very next day, she is sent off to a concentration camp where surrounded by cruelty she grows up too quickly and too seriously. Hope kept her alive as she stuck to senseless rules to increase her chance at survival. Chaya’s story ends abruptly with a pang and by the time she is transported back to the apartment in New York, she has matured into a person who understood the significance of remembering.
  
  The plot device used in this historical fiction puts young readers at ease because they know that despite the hardships Chaya faces, she will become Hannah by the end of the book. A really moving read.
• 
  Lisa Vegan

  This is a marvelous book for young adults, although I wouldn’t recommend it as their first introduction to the holocaust because it portrays the atrocities committed in a starkly realistic way. And, unlike some young adult books that I enjoyed as young as nine or ten years old, I wouldn’t give this to kids until they were at least 12.
  
  It is a wonderful story and, because the main character, an American Jewish girl who’s 12 years old, is from the present time (even though the book was written twenty years ago, it still has a sufficiently modern feel) readers can perhaps empathize with her and the experiences she has when she goes back in time to Poland during the Nazi holocaust. I thought Jane Yolen had a truly inspired way to tell this story. Even readers who do not normally enjoy history or historical fiction will probably appreciate this book because the time travel nature of the story allows a contemporary young person to truly experience events of the past. (I’ve always loved history and historical fiction, but I know that some young people are not so interested.)
  
  The characters are likeable and believable and the ending is smart and heartwarming. All through the book there are hints about how the story will evolve and in a way it was predictable, but the details of the ending caught me by surprise, even though I was looking for the gist of what did happen.
  
  It’s a terrific family story and it could make for intimate discussions between young adults and their adult family members. I’m also strongly in favor of it being taught in schools as part of the curricula for holocaust studies and history lessons.
  
• 
  Becky

  I wasn't really sure what to make of this book when I first saw it, but after having read it, I would say that I am glad that I did.
  
  This is one of those books that really makes you look at things from a different perspective. I can relate to Hannah, because I remember being 13 and having little patience with traditions and customs, and just wanting to hang out with my friends.
  
  But given the experience Hannah had, she was able to see things in a new way, and was granted a gift, even though it was at a great cost, to be able to know and really understand her family's past and how they became who they are. And because of this, she gains a newfound respect and admiration for them, and her own life, that she might not have otherwise known.
  
  This is the lesson that this book taught me. Yes, it was about the Holocaust and the epic tragedy that occurred, but I think it was more about understanding and respecting where you come from, and not letting trivial everyday teenage life get in the way of honoring your past.
  
  ***SPOILERS BELOW***
  
  Ultimately, I gave this one 4 stars only because the book never really explained who/where Chaya was really.
  With these types of books, where someone goes back in time into the body of another person, I always wonder where the person who is inhabited goes when the person who is inhabiting them is there.
  
  Did Chaya die when she was ill, allowing Hannah to come back in order make her a hero to her Aunt? Or did Chaya sort of get shunted off to the side when Hannah took over, which means that Chaya had no choice in the sacrifice she made?
  
  I hope the latter is not the case, although near the end it is mentioned that Hannah has 3 sets of memories -- of being in Lublin, of being with Gitl and Schmuel, and of her American family. It seems to me that Hannah should only have had 2 sets of memories if Chaya was not in there somewhere.
  
  The last possibility is that Chaya was Hannah in a past life, whose life Hannah had a vision of (through Chaya's eyes, perhaps?) at just the right moment to attain the perspective she needed... Of the three, this is the most appealing to me, although some aspects of the story don't fit perfectly with this theory.
  
  Overall, I am very glad that I read this book, and would highly recommend it.
• 
  Cristina Braia

  
  “Cine nu își cunoaște istoria este obligat sa o repete.”
  Hannah, o fetița ebraica, sărbătorește Sederul împreuna cu părinții, bunicii și fratele ei.
  Ea nu înțelege motivul păstrării acestei tradiții, motivul pentru care trebuie ca oamenii sa își amintească tragedii din trecut. Aici, acum, totul e pașnic iar singurele griji pe care le are sunt in legătura cu activitatile pe care trebuie sa le facă, deși ea nu are niciun chef. Numai ca ea nu știe ca totul e pe cale sa se schimbe.
  Este rugată sa deschidă, simbolic, o usa dar ceea ce o așteaptă dincolo este o călătorie in timp - mai exact in anul 1942 in pragul Holocaustului. Naucita de ceea ce vede in jur, ea descoperă si ca numele ei nu mai este Hannah ci Haia, toate rudele ei cunoscute au fost înlocuite cu niște necunoscuți iar soldații naziști sunt atat de aproape. Ea știe ce urmează sa se întâmple, știe de lagăre și de ororile petrecute acolo. Dar o va asculta cineva?
  Mi-a plăcut ideea călătoriei in timp, mi-a plăcut talentul autoarei de a “ambala” cumva tragediile petrecute in lagăre pentru a putea fi citite și de cei mai mici dintre noi.
  Este o carte despre înțelegere, iertare, prietenie și pierdere care poate fi citită la orice vârsta.
  
• 
  Emily

  This was a foundational book for me. I first read it when I was around the age of 12 and it sent me on a research deep-dive about the Holocaust that I've never been able to escape. I related to Hannah at the beginning of the book, tired of always remembering, finding all the pomp and ceremony of Jewish holidays, particularly the Passover Seder, to be boring. This wasn't the first time I'd encountered the Holocaust, but it was the first time it had been so immersive and real. I loved everything from the time-travel, to the storytelling, to realizing just what her great aunt and uncle had been through. I've shared this story with all four of my children now, and I feel like it is an excellent introduction to the Holocaust.
• 
  Skip

  Hannah and her family are celebrating Passover. When Hannah opens the door to look for Elijah, she is transported back in time to 1942 Poland, as the Nazi's are rounding up the Jews for the final solution. Chaya (Hannah) tries to warn her family and friends what is happening, but to no avail as history marches ahead anyway. This book is primarily aimed at younger readers. Yolen's afterword is a highlight.
• 
  Cassandra Ramos

  My son came home last week and said “mom can you believe my language arts teacher is making us read a book this close to the end of the school year?” Being the book nerd I am I became excited and asked what’s the name of the book and he says “The Devils Arithmetic” well I had never heard of the book and decided to read up on it. After reading the synopsis I immediately put the book on hold to pick up the following day. I read it in one fell swoop! I cried like baby snot cried! I read everything my kids read, and I’m glad that my son had the chance to read this ( or still reading). I think that all kids of appropriate age should read this book because it’s real, it’s what happened and children were involved. I have never understood the reasoning behind banned books... I get age appropriate, but books such as this one can teach them to appreciate the life that has been handed to them.
• 
  Melody Schwarting

  I read this because it's the subject of Attack of the Black Rectangles, a middle-grade novel about censorship. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about a time-slip novel about the Holocaust. It doesn't seem quite right, especially in the chapters where Hannah/Chaya's ignorance about rural Jewish life in 1940s Europe is the butt of the joke. Yet, the novel comes to a solid emotional conclusion, and I understand why Yolen chose to tell the story in this way. Unfortunately for her and the whole world, Holocaust denialism is still alive and well 30 years later, but I prefer to privilege survivor's stories and other true stories rather than fiction. The Devil's Arithmetic risks sensationalizing the extremely sensitive material with its time-slip story. There is also little risk at the end, when Hannah/Chaya sacrifices herself for Rivka/Rose, because we know she won't die. "Saved from the Holocaust by a time-slip" is just not doing it for me as a reader. Yet, I found nothing in this book to censor, nor would I ban it (or other Holocaust books) from any school library.
• 
  Janette

  I usually read to avoid hearing about depressing subjects but I went ahead and read this one even though it was about a Jewish girl living during WW2.
  
  It was a good book, and I got choked up in the end. Then I couldn't get to sleep at night because I was too busy pondering how civilized societies are capable of butchering millions of people. It seems so impossible, and yet it's happened more than once in history.
  
  It makes you look at your friends and neighbors and wonder what sort of hearts of darkness might be there.
  
  And it makes you wonder what might happen again in the future. What would I do if the government came for me or for my neighbors?
  
  I know it's not the purpose of the book--but it did make me want to go out and buy a gun for the first time in my life. If the Jews had been armed, it would have been a different story.
  
  Anyway, this was a good book and it made you think--although I go back and forth as to whether it should really be in the juvenile section. I'm not sure it's a book I'd choose for an eight year-old. I mean, if I had trouble sleeping after reading this book, it might be too much for a young child to handle. Parents should probably read it before checking it out for their children.
  
• 
  Kim

  Summary: When Hannah opens the door during Passover Seder to symbolically welcome the profit Elijah, she suddenly finds herself in the unfamiliar world of a Polish village i the 1940's. Hannah had always complained about listening about listening to her relatives tell the same stories of the Holocaust over and over, but now she finds herself in terrifying situation. The Nazi soldiers have come to take the villagers away, and Hannah can guess where they are going.
  
  Response: I loved this book. Being Jewish, Passover is a huge holiday in my family. I can relate to Hannah. I remember thinking that Passover Seders were boring when I was younger. It wasn't until I was older that I learned to fully appreciate the holiday. This book transforms the reader into the Holocaust through the eyes of a child. I think this would be an excellent book to use in the classroom during the study of the Holocaust to show the students a different perspective.
• 
  Lindsey

  Anyone and everyone should read this book! It's a very fast read because it was written for children but it tells a beautiful story and has a great twist in the end. The Devil's Arithmetic is about a young Jewish girl who doesn't quite understand her family's past. She finds Jewish holidays and celebrations to be boring and is unappreciative of the hardships Jews have faced. She is mysteriously transported to the past and ends up in a concentration camp. Here she suffers the hardships first hand and begins to understand and appreciate her family's history. Heads up, it's a tear-jerker!
• 
  K8

  Twelve year old Hannah is sick of spending Passover 'remembering' the past with her relatives. During the Passover Seder, she is transported to 1942 Poland, where she becomes Chaya (her Hebrew name), the girl she was named for. In this time, she is eventually sent to a concentration camp, where the bulk of the story takes place. Throughout the book, she struggles with memory - which memories are real (the future or the now), remembering anything b/c of the trauma of the camp, futilely trying to use her future-memory to warn those around her, etc.
  
  The story is chilling. And it is beautiful and sad. And it is an amazing combination of historical fiction and s/f.
  
  Some of my favorite quotations:
  
  "Passover isn't about eating, Hannah," her mother began at last, sighing and pushing her fingers through her silver-streaked hair. "You could have fooled me," Hannah muttered. (4)
  
  But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. I cannot remember, she whispered to herself. I cannot remember. She's been shorn of memory as brutally as she'd been shorn of her hair, without permission, without reason...Gone, all gone, she thought again wildly, no longer even sure what was gone, what she was mourning. (94)
  
  "We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us." (113)
  
  The days' routines were as before, the only change being the constant redness of the sky as trainloads of nameless zugangi were shipped along the rails of death. Still the camp seemed curiously lightened because of it, as if everyone knew that as long as others were processed, they would not be. A simple bit of mathematics, like subtraction, where on taken away at the top line becomes one added on to the bottom. The Devil's arithmetic." (146)
• 
  Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance

  Hannah is a bored teen, tired of hearing her grandfather's stories about the Holocaust, annoyed that she must attend her family's Passover Seder. She finds, suddenly, that she has been transported back to 1941 Poland, where she is sent to a concentration camp.
  
  The details of the travel to the camp as well as her time in the camp are vivid and shocking to Hannah, and, consequently, to us as readers. People die as a result of the conditions, and some are put to death right in front of Hannah. The food is meager and the guards are brutal. All of this is in sharp contrast to Hannah's modern life, and, again, we as readers are able to experience the horrors of that time just as Hannah is experiencing it.
  
  There are a few references to Hannah's modern life that might be unfamiliar to contemporary readers, but these can be easily explained. I found it to be a very powerful story. We must not forget.
  
  A 1001 Children's Book.
• 
  Abigail

  For me, picking up a book about the Holocaust is a bit like plunging into an icy-cold lake, on a warm summer day. Not because the experience is refreshing - far from it! - but because there is this sense, while standing on the edge, poised to take that fateful step, of drawing back. An instinctive recoiling from what I know will be a sudden and shocking submersion in a different world - one that I'm never entirely prepared to enter, that I fear will swallow me whole, as I sink like a stone, down and down into the cold, dark depths.
  
  Since the day I stumbled across my first Holocaust memoir - Sara Zyskind's
  Stolen Years, which chronicles the author's time in the Lodz Ghetto, and then the Auschwitz-Birkenau death-camp - the year I was eleven, I have had an abiding interest in this terrible episode of history, and a desire to understand what made it, and other genocides, possible. I have, over the years, read numerous survivor testimonies, and devoted much time to considering the nature of human evil, the ubiquity of human suffering, and the historical, cultural, and psychological factors that allow them to flourish. I believe in remembering, in bearing witness, and - to the best of my limited ability - in seeking to oppose and change those factors which facilitate such atrocities.
  
  But no one (amongst the "sane," anyway) can remember all the time. I don't spend every waking hour contemplating these issues, and I don't desire to. Which isn't to say I "forget" them, per se, just that the intimacy of my knowledge, of my remembering, varies greatly. I always "remember" the Holocaust. But the remembering involved in sociological analysis, and the remembering that comes of witnessing - even if only through the printed word - a vulnerable young child, violently separated from his only kin, tossed about in a maelstrom born of adult depravity, depart this world through the doors of the gas chamber, and the smokestacks of those infernal human-powered ovens, are two very different things. To read a book about the Holocaust, be it fact or fiction, is to embrace that second kind of remembering, to become acquainted, once again, with madness.
  
  
  And that seems like an entirely appropriate jumping-off point to me, because this book, this children's novel, is about nothing so much as memory, and our (very natural) reluctance to embrace it. It is the story of a contemporary Jewish American girl who, reluctantly attending her family's Passover Seder, opens the door for the Prophet Elijah, and finds herself in 1940s Poland. Hannah Stern of New Rochelle (five minutes from where I myself live) is now Chaya Abramowicz of Lublin, and a suburban girl who has always lived a life of privilege and plenty is about to discover a world of unimaginable loss and privation. For the small Jewish shtetl in which she finds herself is about to be liquidated - transported to one of the Nazi death camps...
  
  The Devil's Arithmetic is a powerful argument for the importance - the necessity - of remembering, but it is also a meditation on the difficulty of convincing others of the truth, and the limitations of knowledge itself, when confronting the full power of evil unleashed. Hannah/Chaya knows what is coming - she knows what those Nazis and their trucks in front of the village shul mean, she knows where the cattle cars are headed. But although she attempts to warn the others, tries desperately to convince them to flee, no one will believe her. She is, after all, just a child - a child known to say odd things, because of a recent illness - and what she is saying is so unimaginably terrifying to her listeners, that she is silenced - hushed by her "Aunt" Gitl.
  
  Eventually, she is silenced by the loss of memory itself. Horrified, the first night in camp, by the showers toward which she and the other women are being herded, convinced that they are really the gas chambers about which she had learned, in her other life, Hannah/Chaya once again attempts to warn the others. But finally, perceiving that they cannot hear her words, that she is only robbing them of their last protection, robbing them of hope, she desists, only to find this silence reinforced by a horrifying inability to recall who she really is, and what lies ahead:
  
  When the man came to Hannah, she bit her lip so as not to cry and kept her eyes closed the entire time. She concentrated on what was to happen next - after the showers and the hair-cutting, remembering from the lessons in Holocaust history in school. But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. "I cannot remember," she whispered to herself. "I cannot remember." She'd been shorn of memory as brutally as she'd been shorn of her hair, without permission, without reason. Opening her eyes, she stared at the floor. Clots of wet hair lay all about: dark hair, light hair, short hair, long hair, and two pale braids. "Gone, all gone," she thought again wildly, no longer even sure what was gone, what she was mourning."
  
  Hannah, the girl who didn't want to remember the past, has now become Chaya, the girl who cannot remember the future - a future the Nazis are intent on destroying.
  
  
  Jane Yolen has created a powerful story in The Devil's Arithmetic, one that will draw young readers in, allowing them - through the plot device of a modern child traveling back through time - to experience the terror of the Holocaust in a uniquely intimate way. That it is necessary for them do so - to enter into this strange and horrifying world of the past, and become one with the victims - is borne out, not just by the maxim that "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it," but by the reality that we are all vulnerable, not just to those forces which might make us victims, but to those which might make us monsters. As Fayge says, at one point, quoting from a story about the Ba'al Shem Tov: "The enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself."
  
  This "other part" always needs combating. What better way to do this, than to witness the terrible cruelty and suffering that result, when it is unleashed? So... take a deep breath, grab hold of your courage, fix your eyes on the truth, and plunge into that dark water. It has to be done. It always has to be done. And it always has to be done again.
• 
  Lars Guthrie

  Yolen employs a "Magic Tree House" trope to move her main character, Hannah, a bored American thirteen-year-old at her family's Seder dinner, through time, space and language, and it comes off as hokey. Once Hannah becomes Chaya, an orphan living in a Polish village in 1942, though, this tale grabs onto the reader and doesn't let go. Hannah opens the door of her family's apartment to welcome the prophet Elijah and is soon crammed into a crowded cattle car with other Jews on a train destined for the "final solution." Yolen makes such a narrative more than a recounting of horror and the inhumanity of humanity with strong characters and a strong story. By the time Hannah re-enters the present and pleasant Passover gathering with heightened respect and empathy for her Holocaust-surviving grandfather and aunt, I was willing to forgive the contrived device. After all, it's one that works for kids in any number of series. And in the end, it did so here. The novel prompts young readers swept up in Yolen's carefully researched tale to make the effort to remember what must never be forgotten.
• 
  Kandice

  Five stars for the plot device used to tell this story. This is aimed at very young readers and so the grisly subject matter must be presented in a way that allows them to read it without ruining their sleep. Having the main character, a modern day, young Jewish girl, living in New Rochelle, transported back in time does this splendidly.
  
  My three star review is because I didn't feel the story was written very well after that initial stroke of genius. I must admit that part of this could be that I was expecting a book aimed at teens and this was clearly meant for even younger readers, but I still struggled through after the set up.
• 
  Agnė

  The Devil’s Arithmetic is a moving and heartbreaking young adult fantasy/historical fiction novella grounded in the real events that happened during the Holocaust. However, I found the first half of the book to be tortuously slow and boring.
• 
  Hadley

  This book really showed what it was like to be in a concentration camp to me. It was interesting to see how Hannah changed throughout the book after being transported back in time to when she came back home. I did find the book to be a little slow, but it was overall a good book.
• 
  Cam

  Short story ....Hannah begins to revaluate her heritage when she has a supernatural experience that transports her back to a Nazi death camp in 1941.
• 
  Emma

  This book was good but at some points, I got confused about what was going on but it leads to an interesting ending. I liked the ending because it had a twist that was very unexpected. I like how the book kept me wondering about what was going to happen next.
• 
  Franky

  Although there are many Holocaust books out there that are in the young adult genre (Elie Wiesel’s Night and The Diary of Anne Frank come to mind), I had not heard of The Devil’s Arithmetic until a friend mentioned it.
  
  In the novel, Hannah, an American Jewish teenager who is indifferent and apathetic towards her Jewish family’s past, is transported back to the 1940s to experience one of the most tragic, painful, and horrific points in history.
  
  I felt like this book was an immensely powerful read, one that moves very quickly and one in which the reader can get into the head of the protagonist as she travels back into a dark time in history. As one from the future, Hannah knows all too painfully the horrors that await the Jewish people and those in the concentration camps.
  
  The Devil’s Arithmetic works and fits into several genres. It is a fantasy in which a young girl must travel back in time to witness and be part of her family’s suffering to fully understand and to never forget. But, obviously, the book, while tame in its graphicness, is a very realistic portrayal of such atrocities experienced. And, while the names of the places have been changed, this does not deter from the powerfully realistic images: the awful conditions in the cattle cars, the dehumanization of individuals, the shaving of heads, the separation of loved ones, friends, and families, the lack of necessities like food, water, and proper clothing, the selection of victims.
  
  I highlighted a quote in the afterward by the author Jane Yolen that I believe eloquently sums up the entire experience of this book:
  “Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of chaos…”
  
  This point is illustrated in Hannah’s physical and emotional journey, and spiritual transformation that she must go through.
  
  This edition also contains an extremely helpful glossary for Jewish terms and expressions as well as an afterward by the author.
  
  In my opinion, The Devil’s Arithmetic is powerful portrayal of a dark time in history, and it is definitely a book for anyone interested in young adult books about the Holocaust.
  
• 
  Celia

  I am so glad I read this book! What a valuable piece of fiction that makes the Holocaust real and understandable for middle grades on up.
  
  When you first meet the main character Hannah, she is whiny, resentful, and ignorantly ungrateful. That's typical of many kids though (and some adults!), so I was okay with that as the starting point of her character arc.
  
  The setting in the Polish countryside is charming and idyllic, but it doesn't last long. (Someday I want to visit some Eastern European countries. There are a lot of underrated countries over there that people don't typically think of visiting.)
  
  The concentration camp is awful, but Yolen mercifully shows the prisoners helping each other alongside the emotional and physical torments of the place. This setting is where you really get acquainted and invested in the various characters, so when the inevitable happens, you feel it.
  
  Having said that, the book ends on a good note. Hannah completes her character arc by learning to appreciate her heritage and her family's ways of commemorating it.
  
  The Holocaust was an atrocious, evil attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. Sadly, bizarrely, and terrifyingly, some people are now saying that the Holocaust never happened. That kind of revisionist history is exactly what makes books like these so important for people, especially young people, to read.
• 
  Austin Poulin

  This wasn't one of my favorite books at all. There were only a few parts that I liked and found interesting. I thought that the book was pretty boring and confusing in parts. Between switching characters, settings, and timelines, the book got confusing and a little annoying to read. However, I did enjoy the historical aspect of it, even though it does not teach very much.
• 
  Karina

  This is a Amazing book, like one of that makes you cry, when they cry, makes you laugh when laugh and Besides this, It's one of those books that really teaches you something, and the lesson you learn from here is that it's worth cherishing the freedom you have.
• 
  Maria Ilinca Shvets

  O carte foarte buna! Abia aștept sa vizonez versiunea ecranizata care am inteles ca e de asemenea foarte buna.
• 
  Isabella Stevens

  This book is about a girl named chaya and Hannah (they are the same person) going back in time to the Nazi camps and learning about how she should always remember the past and always remember everything. i liked this book a lot because i got to learn more about what evil people the Nazis were and what the Jewish Greek and others were forced to go through. I wish it could have told what happened to Hannah/Chaya and her friend Ester and Shifre after they were "chosen" although it might have been sad. one thing that I never really thought about that much was the smoke stack,that happened to be what happened to the people who fell to the Nazis. I think about it more vividly now then I did before and I'm very thankful that they aren't around anymore. I think this was an overall good book and it definitely deserves five stars.
• 
  Linda

  A haunting rendition of the Holocaust written for young people - so they would never forget. Included a glossary at the end of the story to help explain the Yiddish. I really appreciated that. Not knowing what this book was about, although I know I saw stacks of it in a closet at one of the schools where I taught. If it wasn't for reading
  Attack of the Black Rectangles I probably would not have read it. This book plays a critical role in that book.
  Funny, I didn't notice the segments that were the crux of
  Attack of the Black Rectangles