Mapping the Bones

By: Jane Yolen

Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg, Rebecca Gibel

From the best-selling and award-winning author of The Devil's Arithmetic, Jane Yolen, comes her first Holocaust novel in nearly 30 years. Influenced by Dr. Mengele's sadistic experimentations, this story follows twins as they travel from the Lodz ghetto, to the partisans in the forest, to a horrific concentration camp where they lose everything but each other.

It's 1942 in Poland, and the world is coming to pieces. At least that's how it seems to Chaim and Gittel, twins whose lives feel like a fairy tale torn apart, with evil witches, forbidden forests, and dangerous ovens looming on the horizon. But in all darkness there is light, and the twins find it through Chaim's poetry and the love they have for each other. Like the bright flame of a Yahrzeit candle, his words become a beacon of memory so that the children and grandchildren of survivors will never forget the atrocities that happened during the Holocaust.

Filled with brutality and despair, this is also a story of poetry and strength, in which a brother and sister lose everything but each other. Nearly 30 years after the publication of her award-winning and best-selling The Devil's Arithmetic and Briar Rose, Yolen once again returns to World War II and captivates audiences with the authenticity and power of her words.

©2018 Jane Yolen (P)2021 Tantor

Juvenile holocaust

Janet Yolen’s Mapping the Bones is a fictional holocaust tale with twin fourteen-year-olds as the main characters. The story begins in a Polish Jewish ghetto with cramped living conditions and limited food. When the family gets word that they are to be relocated, they attempt an escape. Gradually, the adults are lost along the way until finally, the children are remanded to a labor camp where they work to generate munitions for the German war effort.

Yolen’s story is raw and brutal, and while advertised for young adults, this is a tragic tale with closure, but without a happy ending. Interspersed throughout the tale are the bits of a multiple decades later perspective as well as the attempt of a granddaughter trying to reconstruct the stories of her child-hood by her grandmother.

The narration is good with decent character distinction. Pacing is a tad slow.