Andrea Warren – författare

The life-changing story of a young boy’s struggle for survival in a Nazi-run concentration camp, narrated in the voice of Holocaust survivor Jack Mandelbaum.

When twelve-year-old Jack Mandelbaum is separated from his family and shipped off to the Blechhammer concentration camp, his life becomes a never-ending nightmare. With minimal food to eat and harsh living conditions threatening his health, Jack manages to survive by thinking of his family.

In this Robert F. Silbert Honor book, readers will glimpse the dark reality of life during the Holocaust, and how one boy made it out alive.

"Think of it as a game, Jack…Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis."

Caught up in Hitler''s Final Solution to annihilate Europe''s Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack Mandelbaum is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps. Here, simple existence is a constant struggle, and Jack must learn to live hour to hour, day to day. Despite intolerable conditions, he resolves not to hate his captors and vows to see his family again. But even with his strong will to survive, how long can Jack continue to play this life-and-death game?

Award-winning author Andrea Warren has crafted an unforgettable true story of a boy becoming a man in the shadow of the Third Reich.

Between 1854 and 1930, more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children were sent west on orphan trains to find new homes. Some were adopted by loving families; others were not as fortunate. In recent years, some of the riders have begun to share their stories. Andrea Warren alternates chapters about the history of the orphan trains with the story of Lee Nailling, who in 1926 rode an orphan train to Texas.

It''s April 1975 and the armies of North Vietnam are pushing into South Vietnam, leaving death and destruction in their wake. In a Saigon orphanage, eight-year-old Long waits and worries. He is a mixed-blood child, the son of a white American father and a Vietnamese mother. What kind of future can he have in a country ruled by North Vietnam-America''s enemy? His only hope of escaping Saigon is via Operation Babylift-the U.S. government''s rescue effort to airlift children like him out of harm''s way. A family in Ohio is waiting to adopt Long. But if he leaves, will he ever see his home and his grandmother again? 

 Award-winning author Andrea Warren -whose own adopted daughter was one of 2,300 orphans brought to safety through Operation Babylift- shares the true story of Long''s journey from war-ravaged Vietnam to his new life in America''s heartland, and ultimately to his return to Saigon to make peace with his past.