Mapping the Bones by Jane Yolen (review)

Despite their father's reassurances, fourteen-year-old twins Chaim and Gittel understand that their life in the Łodz ghetto is becoming untenable: food is running out, the Nazis are shooting people without warning or provocation, and more and more of their friends and neighbors are disappearing. Papa finally decides to flee when he hears that he will soon be ordered to board a resettlement train; the family escapes into the surrounding forest, helped by members of the Polish resistance. The children, however, are separated from their parents and soon captured by Nazis and placed in the work camp making ammunition for the war. As she states in her author's note, Yolen frames this tale of escape and imprisonment during World War II loosely on the folktale "Hansel and Gretel," and while the connection is mostly superficial, the symbolism and imagery of the oven at the work camp is deeply disturbing. The third-person narration focuses on Chaim, with an older Gittel recalling in first person the twins' story decades later in snippets interspersed throughout; though her contributions add much needed emotion to an otherwise dry telling, she's unfortunately never fully fleshed out beyond an authorial device. The events retain their inherent drama, as the siblings evade death but not terror, waiting for their own demise as they watch loved ones succumb to illness, starvation, and worse in "experiments" at the hands of a Dr. Mengele figure. Though this lacks the finesse of the author's Briar Rose, it provides a readable way in to the horrors of the Holocaust. KQG