When I requested this book I wasn't aware it is a book for youth, but soon learned it was by the voice. The book is written in a youth's voice. It is 12 year old Krysia's eyes, ears and emotions that are telling this tragic story. The descriptions and emotions were vivid and very empathetic. Krysia's mother's ingenuity helped the family along in every situation they encountered. Without her ability, they might have perished along with the others.

I was gripped by the story. I read it in one sitting. I was horrified by the conditions and overwhelmed by the unwavering spirit to survive. I highly recommend. It is a realistic glimpse into the life and conditions of those who experienced the atrocities of WWII.

KRYSIA by Krystyna Mihulka with Krystyna Poray Goddu is a memoir telling the story of a young Polish girl during World War II.

Krysia’s peaceful childhood is shattered when German troops invade Poland and her family is forced to leave their home and live in a Soviet work farm. Historical photographs add to the appeal of this remarkable story.

Librarians will find this courageous memoir provides a compelling way to discuss the struggles of families during war. Use this work along with other similar stories in a literature circle focusing on World War II memoirs.

Published by Chicago Review Press on January 1, 2017. ARC courtesy of the publisher.

Krysia was a child in Poland during WWII. She tells her story of how her father had to go into hiding and her family was removed from their house and shipped to Russia to live in a strange land. They had a very rough time and very little food. This book does tell about a part of WWII that many people don't know about and could be good for people who are researching that time period.

This is the story of Krysia whose family was separated during World War II. Her father was forced to go into hiding while the rest of her family was deported to Russia. There they stayed for several years facing - cold, hunger, illness, and death before managing to get away.

For those interested in war time accounts, especially to find out what happened to refugees of other countries this is a solid pick.

"Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, kiedy my żyjemy." If you're a member of Polonia, you'll doubly enjoy this memoir of a young Polish girl's experience of being deported by the Soviets to the steppes of Kazakhstan during WWII. This subject is not brought up often, so it was interesting to read the author's impressions and descriptions of events. Because of the short length, I would also recommend this book to young adults.

Most of us would think of Polish children suffering in World War Two because of the Nazi death camps – they and their families suffering through countless round-ups, ghettoization, and transport to the end of the line, where they might by hint or dint survive to tell the horrid tale. But most of us would think of such Polish children as Jewish victims of the Holocaust. This book opens the eyes up in a most vivid fashion to those who were not Jewish. They did not get resettled in the Nazi Lebensraum, but were sent miles away to the East. Krysia's family were split up, partly due to her father being a Polish reservist when the Nazis invaded, and then courtesy of Stalin, who had signed a pact with Hitler dividing the country between the two states, before they turned bitter enemies. Krysia's family, living in the eastern city of Lwow, were packed up and sent – in the stereotypical cattle train – east. And east, and east – right the way across the continent to rural Kazakhstan, and a communal farm in the middle of anonymous desert, deep in Communist Soviet lands. Proof, if proof were needed, that that horrendous war still carries narratives that will be new to us…

And make no mistake about it, Krysia's story is a new one. (Think Trisha, but with a K.) In the many photos we get in this book we see her as a slightly frumpy, slightly severe girl with a most unfortunate bowl cut, her facial expression varying between cynical and sternly determined. But, of course, a lot of her story was not told by a camera. It's down to her memory to bring to us the winters in the farm, where you were provided with a ladder to prop against the snow that you cleared from the dorm door to walk on the surface crust, on a level with your eaves. It's down to her mistakenly wandering about in the night in one instance, thinking bright lights were bringing her and a companion home when they were actually the eyes of starving wolves. It's down to the nine year old's point of view, that conveys the horror of your mother being taken away by interrogation by the NKVD regarding your father's whereabouts and military status, even when there are several thousands of miles between him and you.

And it's down to the author to convey the tribulations that sees the family slowly, inexorably, brought back to Europe, and through to a troubled peacetime. Those troubles aren't any the lighter for this being a book designed for the under-twelves; far from it. What we see need not be deemed solely for the young audience – like the best of books it reaches all ages, and tells anyone of any level of expertise something new. There was me, looking to tick off Kazakhstan on my list of weird countries I've been to – I would have no idea victims of WWII were fetched up there, where potential babies had no hope, where children might if they were lucky be trained in potato sorting, or creating dung cakes for winter fuel, or if they were unlucky, be snatched off to a quick bit of brainwashing in a Soviet orphanage.

What this is, then, is an unexpected, fresh and most unusual story of that War that like as not you have not come across before. What it is, is a narrative of how the entire century changed – where people with a nanny-cum-maid, a French tutor and piano lessons were forced away, and had to struggle to return on crowded trains in wartime, alongside parents that had been stripped of all class and prestige by a Soviet ideal. It shows a point in time that while the war encompassed a lot of the globe, the world these people knew expanded incredibly, as they found foreign corners to reside in afterwards. The book is really quite accessible, and while there's nothing to comment on as regards literary style, the selling point is how fresh and different this familiar-seeming narrative is. I just wish the ending was not so emotionless and abrupt, otherwise this would have reached the highest rating - it's more realistically a four-and-a-half as it stands.