ONE DAY

Former U.K. Children’s Laureate Rosen returns with a picture-book look at a Holocaust history he’s previously explored in poetry and prose biography.

Eugène Handschuh and his father, both Hungarian Jewish fighters in the communist resistance, are arrested and sent to a Nazi internment camp. Eugène and his friends dig an escape tunnel but are caught and loaded onto a train to Auschwitz; he and his father are eventually separated. Rosen describes Eugène’s escape and miraculous reunification with his father in matter-of-fact language that showcases the young man’s determination. Yoto Carnegie Medal nominee Phillips’ lovely ink, pencil, and charcoal illustrations match the text tonally. Even as Eugène discusses beatings, torture, and starvation, the illustrated prisoners all appear calm and unwounded. Still, a double-page spread of the escapees fleeing the train is gut-wrenching, a pop of color appearing on the darkened tracks as Eugène’s father falls. Unmentioned here is Rosen’s personal connection: Eugène’s deportation train is Convoy 62, the same train that carried Rosen’s murdered uncle and aunt—subjects of On the Move (2022) and The Missing (2020)—to their deaths in Auschwitz. Eugène, who returns to the resistance once he’s free, movingly pays tribute to those who didn’t escape the convoy. “You may ask, where did the train go? / What happened to the twelve hundred people on that train? / There were nineteen of us who jumped / on that one day. / The rest went to Auschwitz. / Only twenty-nine came back.”

A valuable tribute to the spirit of resistance.