T4

LeZotte, Ann Clare. 2008. T4.

T4 is a verse novel set in Nazi Germany. The novel focuses on the holocaust, it's true, but this time the focus is on the Nazi's attack on the mentally ill and/or the physically disabled. Our narrator is a young girl who is forced to go into hiding because she is deaf. Hitler and his party have determined that the deaf (among others) have nothing to live for...and would be better off "mercifully" killed.

This is a verse novel. And the poems are simple and straightforward. Here is an example of one of the poems:

In 1939

I was thirteen years old.
My family and our neighbors
Had learned to accept me.
I was the deaf girl with pigtails
In a red and yellow calico dress.

Father Josef taught me
To write the whole alphabet.
I could read a couple of books.
I carried a pad and pencil

To write down answers
To questions I was asked
Or to ask for a pound of
Sugar or butter at the store.

Many people in town had
Learned my word signs.
It was still difficult
For me to speak.

I moved my lips
when I prayed in church.

I could feel the organ
Playing through the floor.
It shook
My whole body and soull.

At home I helped
My mother cook, clean
And look after
Clara and Schatze.

It would seem
That my life was good.
But something terrible
Was about to happen.

Other reviews, The Well Read Child, Flamingnet, Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature,

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews