Recommended Reading and Reviews
Created in 2023, the Vision Schools Scotland Schools’ Library Network aims to encourage school librarians, teachers and pupils to engage with high-quality Holocaust literature, both fiction and non-fiction.
This group comprises teachers and school librarians who are passionate about encouraging reading in general and who are also keen to support wider teaching and learning about and from the Holocaust.
The group has compiled two extensive booklists of Holocaust literature, one for adults, and one for children and young people. The lists have been produced for use by school librarians, teachers, and pupils to be used when selecting texts for study, for personal reading and also to help with suggesting what someone could move on to read next.
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Submit your reviews
Vision Schools Scotland will be inviting pupils of all ages, school librarians and both primary and secondary teachers to submit their own book reviews and recommendations of Holocaust and post-Holocaust related literature. All submitted reviews will be considered for publication on the Vision Schools Scotland website.
When a review is submitted, the writer’s name will be entered into a draw to win an age-appropriate reading-related prize.
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Pupil Book Review
‘When the World Was Ours’, written by Liz Kessler (2021)
What's the book about?
This young adult novel was inspired by a true story. It focuses on the bond between three young friends and what happens when war and the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust separate them.
What did you like best?
This is a captivating novel about the Holocaust. It is intriguing to read the different perspectives of three young children put through unfathomable circumstances. This book had me feeling as though I was there, watching these characters, feeling what Max, Elsa and Leo all felt and seeing what they went through, at times all alone.
What, if anything, did you not like?
There was nothing about the book itself that I disliked, however, reading it made me despise those responsible and made me hope for this awful period in history to never to be repeated.
Would you recommend this book?
From what I know, I found the story to be historically accurate and I definitely learned more about what Jewish people went through during the Holocaust. It was an emotional roller-coaster, heart-wrenching but full of hope too. I’m very glad to have read it.
Teacher Book Review
‘Irmina’, written and illustrated by Barbara Yelin
Based on a true story from the author’s own family, albeit a fictionalised account, this graphic novel follows the life of Irmina, a young German woman who moves to London in 1934. There, she falls in love with Howard, one of the first black students to study at the University of Oxford, and she witnesses the casual racism he experiences.
The political upheaval of the 1930s leads to Irmina returning home to Germany. When war breaks out and she cannot leave, we see her views on National Socialism begin to slowly change over time. Almost imperceptibly, she accepts what she perhaps would previously not have and Yelin, visually, tells the story of a normal young woman who becomes a bystander in Nazi Germany because it suits her.
As Irmina’s story unfolds, we see how such a change in a person can occur as well as what the repercussions are, over the course of a long life, of choosing such a way of being. The colour palette used by Yelin to represent Irmina’s life in Nazi Germany is mostly muted and grey, reflecting the shading perhaps of Irmina’s own decision making and moral choices and a life lived which could have been very different.
The author used her grandmother’s diary entries to write ‘Irmina’. It is suitable in terms of its content from S2 onwards, with no graphic images. However, it may not appear to younger readers simply because of its subject matter and the fact Irmina changes so slowly and is a bystander more than a central active character.
It’s most suited to learners with an interest in historical graphic novels and/or educators. ‘Irmina’ can be read without prior background knowledge of Nazi Germany or events and circumstances leading to the Nazis’ rise to power, however, this would add to the reading experience.
The detailed afterword by Dr Alexander Korb, director of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2012 to 2018), is useful in allowing the reader to further consider the complexity of the story around ideas of complicity and choices.
Last updated: 19/02/2025