Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when the Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live on for a while in the basement of their home, they are eventually separated and sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of all but her life. By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community; even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead.

Despite her horrifying experiences, Gerda Weissmann Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness of the camps, Gerda and her young friends managed to create a community of friendship and love; stripped to the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story gives an invaluable message to young Americans. It introduces them to this century's terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet shows that with hope and faith, hatred can be overcome.

Before then, Gerda had lost everything and everyone... except her soul. In May 1945, barely alive in a Nazi slave labor camp on the German/Czech border, Gerda and her fellow prisoners were liberated by the Americans. When GI Kurt Klein approached her, Gerda led him to the others who lay sick and dying in the bunks, and quoted Goethe: "Noble be man, merciful and good." And a great love had begun and then forged through a year of letterwriting leading up to their wedding on June 18, 1946.

Their letters, collected in THE HOURS AFTER, show the redemptive power of love in the face of tragedy and loss. They reveal a time when the world was beginning again and two young people -- made old by the horrors of war -- reclaim their youth and discover love.

THE HOURS AFTER is not a book about the horrors of the Holocaust but rather an honest unfolding of passion and vitality. In the shadow of a devasted world, Gerda and Kurt fell in love through their words. THE HOURS AFTER proclaims the beauty and power of letters, made all the more poignant now when the art of letter writing is fading from contemporary society.

Let a child read this book, and you will open a doorway of understanding -- an evocation of the world destroyed, the cruelty of destruction, and the courage of those who seek to rebuild and renew.

Share this book with a child, and you will share an experience -- a precious moment in time for you both. In its poetry and in its sensitivity are worlds of meaning waiting to be discovered, and the eternal discovery that gives hope to them all: that young people themselves are the promise of a new spring. Recommended for readers aged 7 to 10.

The Cage, by Ruth Minsky Sender

The Devil's Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen