Stiefel, Chana. Tower of Life, The: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs. Susan Gal, Illus. Scholastic, 10/2022. 40pp. Biography. GRADES 2-5. $18.99. 978-1-3382-2589-1. OUTSTANDING.
Yaffa Eliach (1935-2016) grew up “a spirited girl who loved her home and her family” in the shtetl town of Eishyshok, Poland (now modern-day Lithuania). In this moving picture book biography, Stiefel begins by painting a picture of life in Eishyshok, a “Jewish town that pulsed with love, laughter, and light.” When the Germans killed most of the Jewish population in 1941, Yaffa and her family managed to escape. Yaffa hid a few family photos, and ”wherever they ran, … they reminded her of home. Snapshots of light—and life—captured in time.” Eliach, a history professor and Holocaust expert, was asked by President Jimmy Carter to create a memorial in the new U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Eliach decided that she “didn’t want to reflect on death and darkness. Instead she wanted to create something that would shine a light onto the beautiful lives of people lost and forgotten.” Thinking of her own treasured photographs, Yaffa collected 6,000 photographs and stories from Eishyshok’s Jewish community, and assembled them into a soaring display called the “Tower of Faces.” Like Eliach herself, Stiefel shines a light onto the lives of the people of Eishyshok, heroes full of dignity, not victims of disaster. Gal’s ink-watercolor-and-digital-collage illustrations reflect the emotional journey of Eliach’s life, warm and bright as a young girl, dark and imbued with red in times of war. Sepia-toned watercolor portraits give readers a sense of how photographs created a record of the townspeople’s lives. A moving celebration of life, full of light and hope.
Mary Ann Scheuer—Independent