Caldecott-award-winning illustrator Anita Lobel writes about "a time from when I have very few pretty pictures to remember." Born in Krakow in 1934, Lobel was five when the German army invaded Poland in 1939 and began rounding up the city's Jewish population. Anita and her brother escaped the city with their beloved Catholic nanny, Niania, and spent much of the war moving from place to place with er, posing as her children. For Anita, who had dark, heavy features the charade was devastating. "Every time I looked at myself in the mirror, all I could think was: Jew, Jew. Ugly, obvious jew girl." Eventually captured, she was held first in Płaszów and then in Ravensbrück before being liberated in 1945. Seriously ill with tuberculosis, Anita was taken to Sweden to recuperate, and there she was reunited with her brother and parents, all of who had, miraculously, survived. This account of Anita's expeiences during world War II and in the months and years immediately following is significant not only as an addition to the important body of literature that bears witness to the tragic events of the time but also as a profile of an artist who has gone on to create images that bring pleasure to children. (Ages 12 and older)

Anita Lobel was barely five years old when World War II began and the Nazis burst into her home in Kraków, Poland. Her life changed forever. She spent her childhood in hiding with her brother and their nanny, moving from countryside to ghetto to convent—where the Nazis finally caught up with them.

Since coming to the United States as a teenager, Anita has spent her life making pictures. She has never gone back. She has never looked back. Until now.