REVIEW OF CATHERINE’S WAR

A. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Billet, Julia. Illustrated by Claire Fauvel. Translated into English from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger. CATHERINE’S WAR. New York City, NY: HarperAlley, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780062915610. 


B. PLOT SUMMARY
A Jewish girl named Rachel Cohen lives in a children’s home in France. The home has its own school for the children. Rachel has not seen her parents for four months. Nazi Germany is now occupying France. There are internment camps for Jews. The Nazis are forcing the Jews to wear yellow stars to identify them. The Jews are taking on fake names to hide their Jewish heritage. For their protection, the teachers at the school force the Jewish students to take on new non-Jewish names. Rachel is a name of Hebrew origin, and it gives Rachel away as being Jewish. To protect herself, Rachel takes on the name Catherine. All the Jewish students at the children’s home receive forged papers with new non-Jewish identities. The Nazi Germans begin rounding up more and more Jews. The teachers at the school realize they need to have the Jewish students leave and go to a safer area. Catherine is taken to a part of France that is safer for Jews. Unfortunately, it isn’t long before Catherine must flee again because the Nazis come looking for Jews in the area Catherine is now in. She also must take responsibility for a younger girl named Alice who will be traveling with her. They find shelter with a family on a farm. However, the shelter doesn’t last long. Nazis arrive looking for them. Catherine and Alice must flee again. They are sent farther south in France to get away from the Nazis. Unfortunately, the Nazis find their hiding place once again. They flee to hide with a group of resistance fighters. Later Catherine and Alice must go their separate ways. Finally, Paris is liberated from the Nazis. Catherine goes to look for her parents. Unable to find her parents, she makes her way back to the children’s home/school where she was at the start of the story. She is reunited with some old friends and teachers. She eventually leaves to make her way in the world.

C. CRITICAL ANALYSIS (INCLUDING CULTURAL MARKERS)
This is well-written and well-illustrated historical graphic novel about World War II. The characters are well-developed. We learn their hopes and fears. The adults and the children in the story are well fleshed out. They are authentic and there is a balance not found in the usual stereotypes. For instance, later in the story, Catherine’s teacher, Miss Armande, is nothing like the teachers that she had at the beginning of the story. Her first teachers were thoughtful, caring adults who thought highly of their charges. They were intent on doing their best for their students, to help them become the best they could be. Conversely, Miss Armande doesn’t even want to be a teacher. She was conscripted to the position, and she thinks very poorly of all her students (except Catherine.) Another example of the characters not being stereotyped is the Nazi soldier that Catherine meets in the shop in town. He ends up providing help and kindness to Catherine, nothing like the Nazi stereotype. The setting is consistent with the time and place the story takes place in. Many of the locations are historically accurate. For instance, at the beginning of the story we learn that Jews are being rounded up and interned in a camp in a place in France called Drancy. This is historically accurate. The internment camp for Jews in Drancy really did exist. This historical novel for children places an emphasis on historical accuracy.  

D. AWARDS AND REVIEW EXCERPTS
Batchelder Honor Book (2021)

USBBY Outstanding International Book (2021)

Horn Book:This graphic novel (adapted from a novel by Billet and inspired by her mother’s life) follows teenage Rachel Cohen from one place to another in WWII France. By changing her name to Catherine Colin and hiding her Jewish identity, she is able to live at schools and an orphanage as well as with families throughout the ­occupied and free zones, moving whenever Nazi suspicion encroaches — and always documenting her experiences with her Rolleiflex camera. Though the story covers Rachel/Catherine’s adolescence, the smoothly translated text is clear enough, and gentle enough in its explanations of the Holocaust, to be comprehensible to readers younger than the character. Themes of self-expression — Catherine’s photography is a rare constant in a life overwhelmed by change — will likely resonate with a wide variety of readers. The back matter is pitched to explain this story’s context to young people with little or no background knowledge about WWII or the Holocaust, though readers familiar with the basics may learn something new about this specific setting.

Kirkus: “This story will make readers want to join the Resistance. In 1942 France, Rachel calls the people who run the Children’s Home where she lives by animal names—Seagull, Penguin, Shrew—to keep their real names hidden from the Nazis. As the Nazis add more and more restrictions against Jews, Rachel must change her identity also, to Catherine. Catherine, unlike Rachel, is allowed to eat pork. The expression on her face as she tries it for the first time is nearly glowing. In a lovely three-panel sequence, Fauvel captures each tiny shift in emotion. Her ability to show complex feelings with the smallest possible strokes of ink is remarkable, and Billet has given her memorable scenes to draw, such as a sequence in which students are drilled on their new names, over and over, in a classroom exercise... Characters are drawn so vividly that, long afterward, readers will remember their names.

School Library Journal: “Billet has crafted a pictorial paean to the everyday heroes of Vichy France, as seen through the eyes—and camera lens—of a Jewish teen. Rachel Cohen’s story begins in 1942 at the Sèvres Children’s Home outside Paris, where students separated from their parents direct their own education. As Nazi deportations increase, the school’s Jewish residents must flee. Rachel assumes a new identity—Catherine Colin—and hides in plain sight. Aided by those she meets on her journey, “Catherine” travels from Sèvres to a monastery in Riom, a family farm in Limoges, an orphanage in the Pyrenees, and a second small farm before finally returning to a liberated Paris in the hope of reuniting with her parents. Along the way, her beloved Rolleiflex camera documents her story one snapshot at a time. Adapted from a novel based on Billet’s mother’s wartime experiences, this tale vividly renders a period that might seem removed to younger readers. Almost every panel—especially those inspired by real photographs—could stand alone as a work of art. This brief book will leave readers wishing they could spend more time among the torrent of settings and characters. VERDICT A remarkable tribute to the generosity, compassion, and courage of ordinary people who endanger themselves to do right, as well as those who capture glimpses of light in the darkness.


Booklist:Billet tells the story of Catherine Colin, born Rachel Cohen, and her experiences as a Jewish girl living in France during WWII in this graphic novel originally published in French and adapted from Billet’s novel of the same name. Catherine’s story begins in a progressive school where she learns about and acquires a passion for photography. As the Germans gain a stronger hold on France, Catherine is forced to move throughout the country to evade capture, but she meets many supportive friends along the way. The lyrical translation reads like a memoir, and it is, in fact, based on Billet’s mother’s experience as one of the “hidden children” of WWII. Catherine is always looking for opportunities to photograph people, and illustrations of her photographs appear often throughout the book. In Fauvel’s artwork, many of the settings are beautifully detailed, with a muted palette that helps evoke the bleak circumstances and landscape, and while the characters receive less definition, they’re undeniably expressive. The ravages of WWII are not glossed over (readers learn of people who go missing, never to be heard from again, and see people with missing limbs, though not in particularly graphic detail), but Catherine’s ability to find beauty in the world regardless makes for a forward-looking read.

Publishers Weekly:Billet’s emotive historical graphic novel portrays a Jewish girl forced to hide her identity during the Nazi occupation of France. When Rachel Cohen’s school outside Paris becomes unsafe, the aspiring photographer changes her name to Catherine Colin and forsakes any expression of her Jewish identity. Before being whisked away by the French resistance, Catherine’s teacher asks her to take pictures of the war (“We’ll need these testimonies”). After, she lives an itinerant life, traveling from a Catholic boarding school in Saint-Eustache to a peasant farm near Limoges and later to an orphanage in the Pyrenees. Though fear and trauma haunt the country, Catherine encounters the selflessness and sacrifice of strangers, becoming a selfless and generous young woman in the process. Fauvel’s earth-toned illustrations feature expressive faces alongside panels of photographs being developed, which prove moving as they become visible alongside other characters’ disappearances. While no scenes from the war are portrayed, violent episodes do occur. Thoughtful meditations on the importance of art and shared connection combine with historical fact to make Catherine’s journey feel relevant.


E. CONNECTIONS
This story helps the reader learn what life was like for Jews suffering from Nazism.

Here are some other graphic novels about the struggle of Jews to exist:

Heuvel, Eric. A FAMILY SECRET. ISBN 978-0374422653

Heuvel, Eric. THE SEARCH. ISBN 978-0374464554

Shayne, Ralph. HOUR OF NEED. ISBN 978-1499813579

Dauvillier, Loic. HIDDEN: A CHILD’S STORY OF THE HOLOCAUST. ISBN 978-1596438736

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