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Children’s Books
Profiles in Courage
A new historical fiction series for young readers highlights “the importance of standing up for what you know is right.”
ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA: No to Fear, by Dominique Conil; translated by Alison L. Strayer
MORDECHAI ANIELEWICZ: No to Despair, by Rachel Hausfater; translated by Alison L. Strayer
I was speaking to a gymnasium full of American middle schoolers once about a book I’d written on the Holocaust when a boy raised his hand and asked, “Was everybody from Nazi evil?” I’d been discussing the Holocaust for 45 minutes and the whole time he’d heard “Nazi Germany” as “Nazi, Germany,” as though I were saying a place name like “Atlanta, Georgia.”
The encounter reminded me that I couldn’t take my young readers’ knowledge of history for granted. To make sure students understand my stories, and what I’m trying to say with them, I have to define seemingly obvious terms like “Nazi” and “Adolf Hitler” anew each and every time.
The two initial entries in Triangle Square’s new They Said No historical fiction series approach this problem in different ways and achieve different results.
The first, “Anna Politkovskaya: No to Fear,” by Dominique Conil (“Hope for the War”), translated by Alison L. Strayer, is a story that should be of great interest to young readers. As a reporter for the independent Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta from 1999 until her death in 2006, Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya became famous for her scathing indictments of Russian politics and society. Her particular focus was the second Chechen war, in which both the Russian Army and the separatists they were fighting were responsible for brutal attacks on civilians.
For her efforts, Politkovskaya won the attention of multiple international award committees — and Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian government. After surviving arrest, torture and mock execution by Russian troops in 2001 and poisoning on an Aeroflot flight in 2004, Politkovskaya was finally assassinated by gunmen on her way home from the supermarket in 2006.
But what is Chechnya? Where is it? Who lives there, and why do they want independence from Russia? The narrative provides no answers to these questions. Unbelievably, the only place this essential context appears is in a footnote on the second page of the afterword. Putin himself is casually referred to in two footnotes before he’s given a cursory introduction in the story.
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