A Bag of Marbles

The original story was written by Joseph Joffo and is a memoir that chronicles the journey Joseph and his brother took across France to continually escape capture by the Nazi army.  Based on his real life story, this book shows how he and his brother travelled from Paris, in the occupied zone of France to the free zone, constantly on the move one step ahead of capture.  This book describes another way a family could survive during the war.  This memoir shows both the history of the time period and how a family could, though there were close calls, for example being questioned about their papers, live through the war in the free zone of France, even at one point attending school.  After the war the brothers and their mother were able to return to Paris.  Joffo's father died in a concentration camp.

Here cartoonist, Vincent Bailly takes the adaptation written by Kris of Joffo's original book and illustrates the story into a graphic novel.   It is a holocaust story.  There is disturbing content, of the atrocities that happened during the war.  Bailly has drawn a well created and descriptive adaptation of the plot.  The pictures are well drawn and color is well used to both represent the lighter and darker moods of the story.  It is sometimes a bit hard to recognize the individual characters but for the most part the characters are well drawn and believable.

I have read reviews that target this book to young teens, but though it is a graphic novel, I think,
this is not really a novel for children.  It is an enticing way to get older teens to read about the Holocaust.