[.ca] Four Perfect Pebbles:: A Holocaust Story (ISBN 068814294X)

WWII as seen through the eyes of a child.:
Though this story is told as Marion saw it as a young child, it nevertheless remains a powerful and moving documentary of the most devastating war our planet has ever known. This book is also a very good WWII primer. It would be required reading for a class entitled "WWII 101". Marion Blumenthal spent her early childhood in Hoya, Germany with her brother and parents. They were a happy, prosperous Jewish family who owned a successful shoe retail business. But Marion's safe, secure world was shattered by the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. The Nazis, the dominant political party of the Third Reich, implemented their radical racial attacks against Jews, Gypsies, Slavics, Homosexuals, Communists, and whomever else was seen as a threat to Aryan purity. This meant the end of life as Marion knew it. Each passing day was a struggle to stay alive and out of the Nazis' clutches. Despite their best efforts, the Blumenthal family fell prey to the Nazis. They eventually landed in Westerbork, a camp from which the prisoners where shipped to their deaths in places such as Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The Blumenthals were transferred to Belsen, and despite their bleak future, Marion clung tenaciously to the hope that better times would come for her and her family. To bolster her and their spirits, she set about collecting four perfectly-shaped pebbles from the grounds of the camp. This was her metaphor for her family which, hopefully, would remain as one till the end of the war. As the war dwindled to a close and Germany suffered one defeat after another, camp prisoners were shuttled along the remains of the Germain railways as the Nazis tried to desperately conceal the evils they had commited in the abandoned camps. Just when it seemed the war would drag on forever, Marion, her family, and their fellow prisoners were intercepted and liberated by Russian troops. A beautiful story of inspiration, courage, and keeping a positive attitude even in the most dire of circumstances.

Moving story from a child's point of view:
"Four Perfect Pebbles" by Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan, tells the story of young Marion's life in Hoya Germany during the rise of the Nazis. The story goes from Holland to Bergan-Belsen where the Blumenthal family ends up. And then after the war in the United States. While this is book for the younger reader, this is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone at any age. Truly this book should not be missed.

Mary Cooke and Kate Robinson's review:
Brief summary and Review: Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story is a wonderful book of how a family stays together through thick and thin. The story is about one Jewish family's struggle for survival during the Nazi occupation of Europe. The family includes Ruth Blumenthal, the mother, Walter Blumenthal, the father, Marion Blumenthal, the daughter, and Albert Blumenthal, the son. The Blumenthals lived in concentration camps for six years which included Westerbork in Holland and the notorious concentration camp of Bergen-Belson in Germany. Conditions in these camps were so terrible that nearly half the camps population died of disease, starvation, exposure, exhaustion, or brutal beatings. The book received its name from young Marion's search to find four perfect pebbles of almost the same size. If Marion could manage to find these four pebbles, she felt that it meant her family would remain whole and be strong enough to survive the Nazi reign. This game kept young Marion's mind on things other than dead bodies lying around, the rumbles of her starving tummy, and the want for her family and life to go back to normal. This is a great story about the importance of family and diversity. I would encourage everyone to take this book home with them today and experience the true account of one family's struggle through the Holocaust.

Four Perfect Pebbles:
Four Perfect Pebbles is an emotional tale about a Jewish family during the Holocaust. The author of this book, Marion Blumenthal Lazan, was around four years old when her family moved from their home in Germany. Soon after that they moved to a work camp in the Netherlands, which is when she started to collect pebbles. Marion thought that if she was able to find four pebbles, almost exactly alike, then her family would survive. "Look closely. I have these three pebbles, exactly matching. Today I will find a fourth." I liked this book because it gave me so much information, so much to think about. I don't think that if I had gone through the same things I would have held up as well as Marion or her brother Albert. "As the food that had remained in the farmhouses was consumed, people began to go on foot or by bicycle to quite distant farms and villages to beg, borrow, or trade in order to keep their families nourished. My brother, Albert, was an expert at this. He was always off somewhere scrounging for food and other necessities." Four Perfect Pebbles is one of those books you can read over and over, catching more details each time. I would highly recommend this book. It is an amazingly touching account of what it was like for a Jewish child to grow up during World War II.

A Must-Read:
FOUR PERFECT PEBBLES is just one of thousands of such stories that mandate telling and retelling. Simply and beautifully, Perl relates one little girl's mode of survival through one of history's most heinous periods. As the author of another Holocaust book, FAR ABOVE RUBIES by Cynthia Polansky, I read everything I can get my hands on pertaining to the Holocaust. This one is a gem that must not be overlooked.