* The Harmonica  Tony Johnston

This is an absolutely amazing story of a Jewish family in Nazi, Poland.    This is a heart wrenching story about a young family in Poland during the Nazi invasion.  This young boy receives a harmonica as a gift from his poor, coal mining father right before the family is captured by the Nazi's and taken to a concentration camp.   The boy uses his harmonica as a way to express his grief of being seperated from his parents and potentially losing them forever.  A guard over hears the boy playing the beautiful music his father taught him to play and has the boy play for him nightly.  As a reward the guard throws the boy scraps of bread and demands that he keeps playing.  The boy goes back to his cell, feeling guilty that he is being fed while everyone else is straving and being worked to death.  As he returns to his cell, another prisoner tells the boy thank you, thank you for playing the beautiful music and giving us all something to enjoy.   This story is very heart wrenching, and includes amazing illustrations.  These gorgeous illustrations start out light and airy, when talking about his family and his happiness, and get darker as each forelorn event is occurring.  As he talks about his years in the concentration camp it begins to get dark, until it is almost completely black and difficult to see.    This story is best suited for older school aged children, 5th grade and up due to the difficult subject matter of Nazis and Jewish concentration camps, the death and dispair would be too much for younger children to handle.