Chance: Escape from the Holocaust: Memories of a Refugee Childhood

"Harrowing, engaging and utterly honest." --Elizabeth Wein, The New York Times Book Review

"A captivating chronicle of eight turbulent years." --The Wall Street Journal

A "Best Book of the Year" from: The New York Times ● Publishers Weekly ● Kirkus Reviews ● Booklist ● Jewish Journal ● Horn Book ● Chicago Public Library

A National Jewish Book Award Finalist

From celebrated Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Uri Shulevitz comes a landmark World War II memoir of hope amid harrowing times and an engaging and unusual Holocaust story.

In September 1939, as German bombs started falling on Warsaw, four-year-old Uri Shulevitz sat still while his mother tied new boots on his feet and told him, "We'll need to walk a lot." So begins Uri's arduous eight-year journey with his family, fleeing Poland and the Nazi onslaught for a precarious existence in the Soviet Union. From the freezing wilderness confines of a labor camp all the way north near the White Sea to hunger-filled years of displacement all the way south in the city of Turkestan, Uri recounts the lucky breaks and setbacks that happened to him and his parents along the way.

Powerfully illustrated by the author and with a few surviving personal photographs and mementos, Chance: Escape from the Holocaust also depicts young Uri's awakening as an artist, whose love of making pictures helped sustain him. Altogether, this is a unique, enthralling memoir of a displaced childhood from the beloved Caldecott medalist, the capstone to a remarkable career.

Don't miss Uri Shulevitz's stunning final published work, The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man's Journey Across Wartime Europe, a gripping true story of a young Polish exile fighting to survive in war-torn Europe.

Author: Uri Shulevitz
Publisher: Square Fish
Published: 11/05/2024
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.82lbs
Size: 7.75h x 6.04w x 0.83d
ISBN: 9781250370655
Audience: Ages 9-12

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.9
Point Value: 5
Interest Level: Middle Grade
Quiz #/Name: 512279 / Chance: Escape from the Holocaust

About the Author
Uri Shulevitz (1935-2025) was a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and author. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 27, 1935. He began drawing at the age of three and, unlike many children, never stopped. The Warsaw blitz occurred when he was four years old, and the Shulevitz family fled, as chronicled in his acclaimed memoir Chance: Escape from the Holocaust. For eight years they were wanderers, arriving, eventually, in Paris in 1947. There Shulevitz developed an enthusiasm for French comic books, and soon he and a friend started making their own. At thirteen, Shulevitz won first prize in an all-elementary-school drawing competition in Paris's 20th district. In 1949, the family moved to Israel, where Shulevitz worked a variety of jobs: an apprentice at a rubber-stamp shop, a carpenter, and a dog-license clerk at Tel Aviv City Hall. He studied at the Teachers' Institute in Tel Aviv, where he took courses in literature, anatomy, and biology, and also studied at the Art Institute of Tel Aviv. At fifteen, he was the youngest to exhibit in a group drawing show at the Tel Aviv Museum. At 24 he moved to New York City, where he studied painting at Brooklyn Museum Art School and drew illustrations for a publisher of Hebrew books. One day while talking on the telephone, he noticed that his doodles had a fresh and spontaneous look--different from his previous illustrations. This discovery was the beginning of Uri's new approach to his illustrations for The Moon in My Room, his first book, published in 1963. Since then he has written and illustrated many celebrated children's books. He won the Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, written by Arthur Ransome. He has also earned three Caldecott Honors, for The Treasure, Snow and How I Learned Geography. His other books include One Monday Morning, Dawn, So Sleepy Story and many others. He also wrote the instructional guide Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children's Books. Shulevitz's final book, completed shortly before his death in New York City at age eighty-nine, is The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man's Journey Across Wartime Europe, a narrative nonfiction account of the adventures of his father's brother Yehiel, who ran away from home at age fifteen, journeyed through prewar Europe for a decade, and ended up a member of the Spanish Republican Army and then the Jewish Resistance in Vichy France.