No Pretty Pictures is about a young girl who has to find her way back to her religion while she tries to understand the meaning of life. She starts out as a normal girl but with one difference. She was a Jew at a wrong time. Her name is Hannah. She has a little brother, a mom, dad, and a nanny. (The nanny is Christian.) Her dad left her and her family when she was five to go and fight in Russia; that is when things go wrong.
People know about the holocaust but few of us have lived through it. Well, this story is about a girl that does. When she was five years old she had to leave to go to a concentration camp. She leaves with her brother, and soon realizes that her life will never be the same. Her mom has papers that say she is a Christian so she doesn't have to go to the camp, but Hannah and her brother don't.
She goes through many hard times, and wonders if she will ever see her parents again. She was in the camps and away from her family for about six years, but she was away from her father the longest. Her father left and was not heard of until six years later when Hannah was in the hospital because she and her brother were diagnosed with tuberculosis. She was put in a hospital for more than three years but she was able to go to a real city. There, she learned the true meaning of life with a little surprise.
I really enjoyed this book. Many books have been written about World War II, but I feel like this one gives a better understanding about what really happened during the holocaust. I think that this book did have its strengths and it weaknesses. One strength is that it gave a good look at what happens to the kids that were in the holocaust, let alone everyone else. It made me feel like I was actually in the book, and it gave great detail about what happened to them and how they felt about the Nazis. One weakness was that it didn't give a clear description about how her family was reacting to the holocaust. Also, her dad left, but then he shows up in the end, but we don't really know what happened to him.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes learning about a new religion, and for someone who enjoys getting into a good book. I would not recommend this book to someone who was younger than nine because it is a harder book to read. I had many "favorite" parts in the book. Most of my favorite parts were the action parts. Many times they would talk about how the Nazis would treat Jews, and it made me feel like I was in the book, and I was one of the Jews who were being tortured.
This book made me think of a lot of questions. Some of them were, how would she react to the new change? How does her mom feel about her family being in the camps, and not her? Did Hannah ever lose hope? How would her brother feel about the experience? And to my surprise, all of them were answered.
I would definitely read this book again because it was so good, and I would still be surprised at some parts. I think this is the best book I have ever read about the holocaust. I hope that the author will try to make a book as good as this one once again.

My thoughts:
This book touches your heart in a way few books do. Told from a child's point of view, using a very child-like voice, the story leaps out of the pages and into your mind. This book is written by an illustrator of beautiful picture books like Potatoes, Potatoes, and On Market Street. The title, No Pretty Pictures, seems to reflect her drawing career. In one example, when she first was allowed to enter school after the war, she was sent to an art class. There, she was given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and a set of new watercolors. She painted a wonderful blue chair, to the delight of her art teacher and the other students. She hasn't stopped painting since.

One moral that simply explodes out of this book is to never give up. No matter what life throws at you - starvation, imprisonment, hiding, or whatever - you can persevere. Anita overcame all of the obstacles placed in front of her, either by herself or with the help of others, and has created a spectacular life for herself. If she can succeed despite such odds, so can everybody else.

I think children would love to read this book when they are old enough to get all the way through it. At almost 200 pages, it is not a quick book to read. But it is a gripping, page-turning story - one of those kind that you can't put down. I think children will be drawn to the child-like voice of the story, the innocence the author manages to use. Anita Lobel is one of those truly gifted authors that can tell a horrible story about a child, for a child, without sounding condescending or self-pitying.