Category: Writing Books for Children: Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult

Kathy Kacer’s The Magician of Auschwitz, published by Second Story Press (2014), tells the true story of a lonely boy named Werner Reich and a mysterious magician named Herr Levin (a.k.a. Nivelli the Magician) who become friends in the barracks of Auschwitz. War brought them together in one of darkest times of the human race. But magic gave them hope, laughter, and the will to survive.

Kacer’s evocative language helps to highlight the inner tensions, worries, and fears of the camp’s inhabitants. While telling the story of Werner and Levin, readers’ emotions are tugged. Kacer pulls the reader into their moving experience – one that shows how magic and magic tricks bring two people together and give them the courage to overcome their surroundings. The characters in the book are real people. Kacer has made sure they retain their three-dimensionality by creating strong, resilient, fearful, caring, and flawed characters…