pickSix stories based on notebooks filled with accounts by young Jews in Lithuania translated from Yiddish. They were entries for a prize that was never awarded because Hitler invaded Poland. I liked the art work and the stories. The fact that they were found - they had been hidden for years in a church - is amazing.
pickBased on a special find. During a cleaning of St George‘s Church, a decommissioned church in Vilna, Lithuania, in 2017, a trove of hidden papers were found in the organ pipes. These were Yiddish biographies of teenagers from the late 1930‘s. They had entered a competition that was never awarded because of WWII. The works were hidden from the Nazis and then the Soviets. Krimstein has illustrated 6, teenage voices from the lost Yiddish world. ✡️
It‘s amazing these stories exist. A late-1930‘s biography competition for Yiddish teenagers across Europe accumulated several hundred entries in Vilna (now Lithuania). Of course there are no more Yiddish teenagers in Europe. These were first hidden from Nazi occupation and then hidden from Soviet Russia and only recently discovered. Krimstein illustrates six of them. I‘ve just begun to scan through.
pickThis is an amazing graphic novel that brings life to six autobiographies written by Yiddish teenagers shortly before World War II broke out. The backstory behind these autobiographies (explained in the preface) is incredible, and I loved hearing these teenagers‘ voices all these decades later.
When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers | 
