What do Stephanie Meyer, David Baldacci, Chuck Palahniuk, and the Jewish Publication Society have in common?  Why, they all have books on the Wall Street Journal’s best-sellers list for fiction!

Yes, you heard me right.  Harry Potter?  Nuh-uh.  Twilight?  Fuggedaboutit.  This season, the hullaballoo is all about Eve Bunting’s illustrated children’s Holocaust allegory, Terrible Things.  First published in 1980, Bunting’s book encourages children to stand up for what they think is right, without waiting for others to join them.  In her brief introduction to the book, Bunting writes, “In Europe, during World War II, many people looked the other way while terrible things happened.  They pretended not to know that their neighbors were being taken away and locked in concentration camps [...] If everyone had stood together at the first sign of evil would this have happened?”  It’s a powerful question, and a difficult one to pose to children in a meaningful and appropriate way.  Yet Bunting’s parable about the “Terrible Things” that come to take away forest animals one by one, until only Little Rabbit is left, does exactly that.  The story brings to mind Martin Niemöller’s famous poem about the dangers of political apathy:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

It’s incredibly difficult to pose painful moral questions to children, and yet it’s also vitally important that we encourage our children to think about these ideas.  That’s why Florida (yes, the state), has recently placed Terrible Things on the 2009-2010 required reading list for its Holocaust education curriculum.  If you’re looking for a sensitive book about the Holocaust for your children, the Wall Street Journal and the state of Florida agree: look no further than Terrible Things.

So here’s to the Wall Street Journal’s best-sellers list!  And here’s to many more JPS books getting on that list – personally, my money’s on A Heart Afire.

-Naomi