Hidden-A Child's Story of the Holocaust: By Loic Dauvillier

         Perhaps my favorite genre to read is historical fiction, but when I stumbled across Loic Dauvillier's Hidden, I was immediately skeptical, that is until I read it. Hidden is a graphic novel that was originally published in French in 2012 under the name L'Enfant Cahee. Alexis Siegel translated the novel and in 2014 it was published in English, under the current title. The book received a Batchelder Honor Award in 2014, given for outstanding children's book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the US. In the graphic novel, Dauvillier tells the powerful story of a grandmother recounting her childhood experiences hiding from the Nazis in France during World War II to her granddaughter, Elsa. In a world riddled with cruelty and harshness, Dounia Cohen finds her 6-year-old-self shunned by her peers and teacher the first time she wore her required yellow star identifying her as Jewish. Soon after her parents are taken away by the police during a raid, and she finds herself depending on neighbors to hide and protect her. When the time is right, Dounia is able to escape to the French countryside, where she is safe to wait out the rest of the war.
         This over-archingly hopeful story makes use of a long series of cartoon-style, detailed illustrations, typical of what you might see in a comic strip. The intense details of every image help to slow the readers movement through these story. Because there are so few words on a page, the reader is tempted to fly through the rest of the story to learn what happens, but the intricate details of Greg Salsedo and Marc Lizano's illustrations beg the reader to slow down, in order to discover hidden images. For example, in one sequence, if the reader looks closely, a "picture" of Dounia's missing parents is shown in the background and gradually grows and grows, until it takes up an entire frame of the story.
        The writing of Dauvillier conveys an account of the Holocaust that while very real, is ultimately child-friendly. The explicit details of what occurred during this time period are for the most part put vaguely and the story focuses on a young girl's experience hiding, missing her parents, and seeking refuge. As we like to see in books written for children, Hidden ends on a lighter note, with Dounia and her mother finding each other again as World War II ends, and Elsa, a young girl in present-day France, becomes closer to her grandmother, who after many, many years is now telling her story.
       With numerous positive reviews, Dauvillier's graphic novel, Hidden, really works with the historical fiction genre. The fact that the story is told in the form of a graphic novel, lends itself nicely to the child-friendly Holocaust story idea. The story relies heavily on dialogue between characters and images to drive the plot and give the reader information about emotions and settings. This book is written for readers that are a little bit older, I would say definitely no younger than 10-years-old. This book has a high level of visual appeal and recalls the details of a tragic historical time factually, without being too vivid. This book, with guidance and premising perhaps, would be a good introduction for a young reader to the Holocaust.

For another story of a child's perspective of the Holocaust, check out Louis Lowry's, Number of the Stars

Picture Source: http://us.macmillan.com/hiddenachildsstoryoftheholocaust/loicdauvillier