Wordwings

"It is 1941 when twelve year old Rivka Rosenfeld lives in the midst of the Warsaw Ghetto with her grandfather and two sisters in the small sanctuary of a synagogue because housing is so scarce. When her grandfather's beard is slashed from his face by German soldiers simply because he is Jewish, Rivka becomes so angry that she is compelled to write in between the pages of a worn library book of fairytales by Hans Christian Andersen. As she hides her words in the rags of her pillow, she wishes she could bury them deep under the ground where someday they would be discovered after the war. Rivka charts her memories as well as her stories and learns that through her storytelling, she can transport, strengthen, and uplift her listeners who are mainly the homeless, orphaned, and beggar children. Rivka is especially drawn to stories of birds because of her wish to escape the horrors of Ghetto life. Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, historian and founder of the Underground Archives-a written compilation of life experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto-is so impressed by her storytelling that he asks her to contribute her diary with her stories to this archives and Rivka agrees wholeheartedly, imagining her words rising up from the ground on wings of their own."--