by Dorit Orgad

Transmitting Determination

Our Jewish past is a deep pit covered with fragile wrapping, and if once our goal was to deny the existence of this pit, and to hide its terribleness from young, readers, today this tendency is reversed. In my book The Heart That Sought and the Heart That Found, (Winner of the Yad Vashem Prize, 2001), I describe a high school student who goes to Europe on her summer vacation to places where a relative had fought the Germans as a partisan in World War II, and she returns a completely different person. From a lighthearted girl she became aware of the history of her family and her people, and the determination of the partisan relative is passed along to her.

In my books Friendship Tested and The Hour of the Test I bring meetings between Jews and Arabs, while noting the problems and the dangers that are a part of these engagements. The personal acquaintance, the information, the confrontation, allow readers (11 and over) to crystalize their own thinking and attitudes, and hopefully prevent confusion and fear.

Dorit Orgad was born in Germany and came to Israel as a child. She has a doctorate in Jewish philosophy and has written dozens of books.

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How Books Tell the World’s Bad News to Children

The articles in this special section:

Beware Sentimental Tripe

by Jane Yolen

Truth Soothes

by Susan Rich

Heroines Overcome their Demons

by Gail Carson Levine

Children: Stronger Than We Think

by Shira Geffen

Bad News from the Start

by Ellen Handler Spitz

Every Child Imagines Orphanhood

by Gail Hareven

Kaddish as Magical Incantation

by Susie Morgenstern

Cry for Someone Else

by Esther Rudomin Hautzig

History Helps

by Karen B.Winnick

Struggles of Underdogs

by Sonya Sones

Transmitting Determination

by Dorit Orgad

No Brainwashing

by Yehudit Kafri

Hope After the Holocaust

by Ruth Minsky Sender

Pain Is a Teacher

by Julius Lester

Forget Bibliotherapy

by Johanna Hurwitz

War in a Picture Book?

by Fran Manushkin

Discovering Hatred

by Leslea Newman

Don’t Plant Seeds of Despair

by Sami Michael

Between Hopes and Reality

by Etgar Keret

The Power of Anger

by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso