Free verse is a form that lives on the line break, which makes this audiobook an interesting problem before a single word gets spoken. Yellow Star is described on the record as a novelization in free verse of the true experiences of the author's aunt, and it runs three hours and eleven minutes, read by Christina Moore. On paper a reader sees where every line stops and starts. In a recording somebody else decides that. Each pause taken here is a choice Moore made, and the listing cannot show you a single one of them.
A Closer Look at Yellow Star
Syvia Perlmutter was four years old in 1939 when the Nazis invaded Lodz and forced her, along with what the description counts as 270,000 other Jews, into a ghetto behind barbed wire and armed guards. The book stays inside that viewpoint. When the Nazis begin removing children to keep them safe, Syvia's father does not believe them, and he protects her by every means available, at one point hiding her in a graveyard. Russian soldiers liberate the ghetto in 1945. All of it comes from someone small enough to have caught only fragments.
In the description, 800 survivors remain at liberation and Syvia is among them, with only eleven other children. Michelle aka Naila Moon, reviewing in January 2014, supplies a different count: only 800 adults and 12 children survived. Twelve children including Syvia squares with eleven others plus her, so the child figure agrees across both. The adult figure does not. One version puts 800 people in total. The other puts 800 adults and adds the children on top. Both sit on this page, and the page declines to choose between them. Neither is presented as a correction of the other.
Michelle's entry does more explanatory work than the description manages, laying out that over 6 million Jewish people were killed and that a million of those were children, then narrowing to the Lodz ghetto and to Jennifer Roy telling it in first person. It is building toward what became of Syvia Perlmutter afterward, gives a second name in parentheses, and stops on the words now kno. The one thing a listener would most want to know is precisely where the text runs out. What survives is the arithmetic of the catastrophe and none of the aftermath.
Christina Moore is credited alone, and the casting question is the entire production. A four-year-old narrates in 1939, and one adult voice has to age that child through six years of ghetto to liberation in 1945 without either impersonating a child or flattening one. Free verse hands a performer enormous latitude, since the pacing is not nailed down by sentence structure, and three hours and eleven minutes is a very short runtime for material weighing this much. Every one of those decisions stays invisible on this listing.
Angela Dey filed at the halfway point and explained the reason for it, a need to say something about the style before finishing. That style, the review reports, really gives you the impression of a child's viewpoint, short and to the point, and while it may look like simple observation, that is likely all a child so young could fathom of what was really going on. Then comes the practical note. This is something Dey could read to a son, because so far it is not extremely depressing or graphic.
Six votes are counted on this listing while five people have written, which is peculiar on its own, and the badge compounds it. A 4.4 average cannot be produced by six whole-star votes under any rounding rule you choose to apply. Six fives yields five. Five fives and a four yields 4.8. Four fives and two fours yields 4.7. Nothing in that sequence lands on 4.4 and stays there. Whatever the number represents, it is not six people's stars averaged, so read the five bodies instead.
Things to Know Before Starting Yellow Star
The genre tag on this record reads children's audiobooks and the subcategory reads Geography and Cultures, which is an almost comically inadequate label for a book set in the Lodz ghetto. Recorded Books published it, and the honors listed are serious: a Boston Globe and Horn Book Awards honor book, starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, VOYA and School Library Journal, the last of which called it a standout in the genre of Holocaust literature. Geography and Cultures prepares a parent for none of that.
Recorded Books offers no age guidance anywhere on this page, and the reviewers do not agree about who the book is for. Angela Dey judged it safe enough for a son at the halfway mark, with a qualifier attached. SareK calls it touching and sad and praises the child's perspective. Kindle Customer's five-star review is barely about the book at all for most of its length. It is about a friend from the reviewer's teenage years, named Carole, whose mother Rachel had been in the camps and whose house was always quiet.
Two things follow from that entry. The first is that this book reaches people who grew up beside the silence it describes, which is a genuine recommendation and hard to manufacture. The second is that it says nothing whatever about the recording, and neither does anything else on the listing. For a text whose meaning depends on where the lines break, no comment at all on how Christina Moore handles them leaves the single most important variable unmeasured.
Who Jennifer Roy Is Writing For
Parents introducing the Holocaust to a child have a strong candidate here, because the first-person viewpoint limits what the book is able to show, and Angela Dey's halfway verdict on graphic content is the most useful sentence available on this page. Classroom listening works comfortably at three hours and eleven minutes, roughly two sittings. Adults who read Holocaust literature will find that the free verse does something prose cannot, which is to make the silences part of the text.
Wrong choice for a listener who wants a full historical account, because restriction is the whole method: one child, one ghetto, no overview offered. Wrong choice too for a very young child alone with headphones, whatever that Geography and Cultures tag implies, since the events include children being taken away and years of near-starvation. And do not lean on the star average, since no arrangement of six whole-star votes produces it. Younger listeners will need somebody sitting beside them, not a closed door.
Good to Know
Can a free-verse audiobook work once the line breaks disappear?
That depends completely on the reader, and this listing offers no evidence either way. On paper the eye sees where each line stops. In a recording Christina Moore makes that decision with pauses, and nobody who reviewed the book mentions the performance at all. At three hours and eleven minutes, pacing carries real weight.
Is Yellow Star suitable for a child listening alone?
Angela Dey, writing at the halfway mark, judged it safe enough to read aloud to a son and noted that so far it was neither extremely depressing nor graphic. The events still include children being removed by the Nazis and years of near-starvation inside the ghetto. Listening together is the sensible approach.
Why do the survivor numbers differ between the description and the reviews on this audiobook page?
The description has Russian soldiers freeing 800 remaining survivors, among them Syvia and only eleven other children. One reviewer instead reports 800 adults and 12 children surviving. The child count reconciles between the two; the adult figure does not, since one version keeps everyone inside the 800 and the other adds children above it.
