Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

Today, we know the plague was carried by fleas hitching rides on rats. Back in the day, nobody knew what caused the plague, a highly contagious disease that could wipe out entire towns. When townspeople showed signs of the plague, some would freak out and run to another town, not knowing they carried the plague with them to infect even more people. This is the climate in which Anna Frith, an 18 year old widow with two kids, lived in from 1865 – 1866. When her town’s people come down with the plague, some want to run away, but the town vicar, who Anna works for as a maid, convinces most of the townspeople to stay. The town locks down into a year of forced isolation. Nobody can leave, and nobody is allowed in. Of course, as the plague spreads, some still run off—some to join a group of flagellants, people who believed that the plague was sent by God to make people atone for their sins and that if they whipped themselves into enough pain, God would forgive them. As the year of isolation goes on, the townspeople suffer greatly and begin to look to each other for someone to blame. Is there a witch in their presence? Or did someone bring God’s wrath down upon everyone for his own sin? Anna, the vicar, and his wife are only a few of the townspeople who manage to cling to their humanity. Will they survive the year? Will the plague go away?

This book is based on an account of a true town that shut itself off from the world. Brooks does a great job of making even the mundane events of daily life readable and interesting, and the book is littered with one shocking event after another. Brooks keeps her readers emotionally involved, and you will be almost afraid to turn the page to see who else has died of the plague or violated the town's agreement to quaranting themselves.

Book; 13+; ISBN 9780142001431; New York: Penguin Books, 2002

Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Whether you like graphic novels or never considered reading one, this book is a must! Maus tells the true story of Art Spiegelman’s parents’ survival of Hitler’s persecution of European Jews. Spiegelman tells not only the tale of his parent’s survival but of Art’s own coming to terms with his family history. In this Holocaust tale, the characters are depicted as animals: Jews are mice, Germans are cats, French are frogs, Americans are dogs, and Poles are pigs. Art’s father, Vladek enlists in the Polish Army when war breaks out. However, he is Jewish, and when Germany conquers Poland, he and his wife, Anna, are forced to move into a Jewish ghetto. When they learn what will happen to them if they are sent to a Nazi concentration camp, they go into hiding.

This novel does not have a happy ending… yet. It is the first of two graphic novels chronicling Art’s family as they struggle to survive the Holocaust. This graphic novel is sometimes considered an adult novel and sometimes a young adult. The story is harrowing and disturbing, even more so because it is told in pictures. Because everything is illustrated, it does not let your imagination soften the experiences of the Jews during the Nazi regime and the Final Solution. It is very "in your face."

Graphic Novel; ISBN 978-0394747231; New York: Pantheon Books, 1986