Product Description

A young Jewish girl living in Holland tells of her experiences during the Nazi occupation, her years in hiding, and the aftershock when the war finally ends.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #875763 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From Publishers Weekly
-036909-0 A Dutch Jewish girl survives WWII in hiding in the first of these novels; the second novel visits a young survivor after the war has ended. A starred review commended these books for their "hard-won and profoundly stirring" responses to life-and-death struggles. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6-- A story set in Holland during the Nazi occupation. Eight-year-old Rachel, her sister, and her parents survive the war by being hidden by a number of families. The autobiographical novel, told in the present tense, gains momentum from the accumulation of everyday details about the events that dominated their lives. The need to stay indoors most of the time, the sudden moves in the night to another family, and the counting and recounting of deaths after the war provide tension and a feeling for what it was like to live in hiding at that time. Vos writes that her aim is to tell "how terrible it was to be a Jewish child in Holland during those years." She has certainly accomplished this, but the impact of her story lacks strength because readers never know the characters well, and there is not a clear sense of time passing. For example, Rachel is 8 when the book begins and 13 when it ends, but the milestones are unmarked. Although not as powerful or as moving as The Upstairs Room (Crowell, 1972) by Johanna Reiss or Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Doubleday, 1967), children interested in this period will want to read Rachel's story. --Amy Kellman, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Fittingly horrifying in its immediacy, the book is an excellent addition to World War II novels." -- Review

Customer Reviews

I think this is a very good book.
As a sixth grader I really enjoyed the book Hide And Seek. The story was about a little girl named Rachel who lived with her parent's and her sister. Rachel was only eight years old when the Nazis invaded Holland. And then the changes begin. Rachel coulen't go to her school any more, and she wasn't allowed to enter the park. And the Nazis took Rachel's bike away. Finally, she was forced to wear a yellow star- all because she was a Jewish girl. When the Nazis closed in, Rachel's family went into hiding, Rachel's family was moving house to house in the middle of the night. I liked this book because it was interesting.

First book I ever read in the present tense
I first read this book at twelve, and I believe that one of the reasons it's been so unforgettable to me is the fact that I had never read a book written in the present tense before and hadn't known a book could be written in anything but the past tense. It inspired me to use the present tense in my own writing; in this book, the present tense coupled with the tense times and situations the Hartog family must go through makes the story more compelling, immediate, haunting, and page-turning. A story written in the past tense tells us that everything has already happened, but in the present tense, we're living right in each new moment and don't know what might happen next.

I didn't really take notice of this till I recently read it again for the third time, but time really does pass too quickly here; we aren't told how much time has passed between most of the events, and Rachel, who was eight years old in 1940 when the book began, is turning twelve years old in hiding when the book is only about half over. But it only makes sense; Rachel and her little sister Esther are just young children and wouldn't have the same perception of time that an older person would. A person who experienced these events as a teenager or adult would certainly tend to remember in detail how much time had passed after each important event and what all they were doing during the time periods that weren't written about, but a young child is more likely to remember things and people than specifics about the exact passage of time or every little thing that happened. And Rachel sees everything through the eyes of a child, not a mature adult who would have more perspective on these events.

Though the family is happily reunited at the end (even with Rachel and Esther's maternal grandparents), the way Ida Vos and her little sister were reunited with their parents after the war, the story doesn't end there like some childrens' books on this subject might. The family still has to come to terms with all of the missing and dead friends and relatives, finding a new house, catching up in school, having to break out of habits they acquired while in hiding or in the camps (such as Rachel and Esther praying a Christian prayer before meals and their grandfather stealing old bread from garbage cans), and readjust to doing all of the things they were forbidden to do before, like ride bikes, go to school, walk around freely, go swimming, and go shopping whenever they want to. Though it's for a younger audience and thus can't go into the same harrowing detail that an adult book of this nature would, it gets the story and its impact across powerfully.

Hide and Seek
During a time of war, families are split apart, confusion is prevalent and innocent people get hurt. World War Two is the setting for Ida Vos's Hide and Seek. The Hartog family lives in a small town near Holland and knows that the invasion of the Germans is inevitable. The Hartog's are a prominent Jewish family and contribute much to their community. Their oldest daughter, Rachel, experiences racial prejudice first hand.
Rachel and her family are forced to go into hiding as the Germans take over their city. The family is eventually split apart and Rachel has no way of communicating with her parents. Day by day she receives a total of deaths and can not help but feel overwhelmed that her family members may be one of those numbers.
Ida Vos allows the reader to feel the hurt and confusion that Rachel goes through. The questions that Rachel asks about the hatred of some people only contribute to the emotions of the reader. As one reads, they are lost in the setting and time of this war and feel as if they were there along side of Rachel.