The Wrong Boy by Suzy Zail

THERE are many books about the Holocaust written for youths, so when The Wrong Boy crossed my desk, I couldn't imagine what more needed to be said.

THERE are many books about the Holocaust written for young people. Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne and Then by Morris Gleitzman spring to mind as excellent examples.

So when The Wrong Boy crossed my desk, I couldn't imagine what more needed to be said.

Australian-born author and daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Zail writes in the first person of Hanna Mendel, 15, a girl living with her sister Erika and her parents in the Debrecen Jewish ghetto in Hungary.

A straight-A student and talented pianist, she has always lived and played by the rules. But then the Nazis arrive, announce the ghetto is closing and the family will be "resettled''.

The long train journey in a cattle car leads them to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Such is the writing style, I was hooked from the first page. Hannah's very ordinary account of the dirt the guards leave on her mother's rug, having to undress in front of strangers, and the separation from her beloved father at the camp make a big story very personal. Far from being the numbers they are referred to in the camp, the girls have dreams and plans for the future.

Although, as the title suggests, there is a love story woven into the plot involving the camp commander's son, no less, it doesn't pull any punches about the hard decisions inmates often had to make.

The only part left to the imagination is what happens to those who disappear. Older readers know the outcome but, for younger readers, it may not be so obvious.

The Wrong Boy by Suzy Zail
Walker Books, $18.95