We take this journey through the eyes of William Kaplan’s father, Igor, who was nine years old when he escaped with his little sister and parents from Lithuania in 1940.

As Igor’s Jewish parents feel the Nazi net tighten, they begin the nightmare of pursuing the crucial documents so many bureaucrats seem intent on denying them. From the charming Baltic city of Memel they take a long journey – not west but east via Russia and Japan, across three-quarters of the globe. How could this happen, the book prompts children to ask, to innocent people? This dark reality – so far from well-protected North American life as to seem like another planet – is one we naturally feel uncomfortable presenting to children. But here it is carefully, sensitively packaged; Stephen Taylor’s beautiful paintings of the family en route convey both fear and hope. Maps and photographs – of the family, sights they might have seen along the way, the grim events they escaped – work hard to bring events of two generations ago into contemporary focus. They also allow some intellectual distancing from painful material.

One of the book’s themes is how people – children, especially– go on living, taking pleasure and comfort from small things as well as big ones. And the story has a happy ending, beyond the derelict Ontario farm where this sophisticated urban family spent their first Canadian year. But we aren’t allowed to forget that the happy ending for Igor’s family was very different from what happened to the millions they left behind. The day after Igor’s Russian mother got her visa, the borders closed; 90% of Lithuania’s Jews perished. Besides courage, a major ingredient in the family’s survival was extraordinary luck. Teachers will appreciate the book’s applicability not only to the Holocaust but to the plight of refugees today.