The Red Ribbon
by Lucy Adlington
Interest age: 12 to 16
Reading age: 12+
Published by Hotkey, 2017
About this book
Ella is a 14-year-old girl who is obsessed by fashion and making beautiful dresses. We meet her on the first day of her first job as a seamstress. At first, the story feels like a dystopia set in some harsh future. And then the penny drops. Ella’s ‘Birchwood’ is the Nazi concentration camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau and the year is 1944. It’s Ella’s job in the camp, where everyone must either work or be killed, to make beautiful clothes for the wives of Nazi officers and female guards.
Although the story of Ella is fictional, author Lucy Adlington is also a costume historian, who has researched into the Auschwitz Commandant’s wife Hedwig Hoss, who really did employ prisoners to work on her wardrobe. Fashion and Auschwitz may seem an unlikely pairing in a children’s book, but this story is tremendously thought-provoking about the horrors of the Holocaust and the deeper meaning of clothes and the way you present yourself to the world.
The Red Ribbon is a moving story of friendship, kindness and heroism under impossible circumstances.
More books like this
-
Once
by Morris Gleitzman
9 to 14 years
-
The Night I Borrowed Time
by Iqbal Hussain
9 to 14 years
-
Roman Boy
by Tony Bradman, illustrated by Alessandro Valdrighi
9 to 14 years
-
The Voyage of Sam Singh
by Gita Ralleigh
9 to 14 years
Lists of recommended reads
-
Books about the Holocaust for children 12+ and teenagers
Here is a poignant booklist that should hopefully help explain and inform teenage readers about the events surrounding the Holocaust.
-
Books about the Holocaust for children 8 to 12
Here is a poignant booklist that should help explain and inform younger readers about the events surrounding the Holocaust.