SiebertSibert Award

Newbery HonorNewbery Honor
Hitler Youth

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow. Scholastic Nonfiction, 2005.

Book Description
"I begin with the young. We older ones are used up . . . But my magnificent youngsters! Look at these men and boys! What material! With them, I can create a new world." --Adolf Hitler, Nuremberg 1933

By the time Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, 3.5 million children belonged to the Hitler Youth. It would become the largest youth group in history. Susan Campbell Bartoletti explores how Hitler gained the loyalty, trust, and passion of so many of Germany's young people. Her research includes telling interviews with surviving Hitler Youth members.

2006 Newbery Honor Award
"How could the Holocaust have happened? Bartoletti delivers a chilling answer by exploring Hitler's rise to power through the first-hand experiences of young followers whose adolescent zeal he so successfully exploited and the more extraordinary few who risked certain death in resisting. The meticulously researched volume traces the Hitler Youth movement from the time it formally gathered strength in the early 1930s through the defeat of the Third Reich. The grace and clarity of the writing make Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow a powerful addition to Holocaust literature for children."

2006 Newbery Committee
American Library Association

2006 Robert F. Sibert Honor Award for Distinguished Information Book
"Readers will be riveted by the chilling history meticulously documented in Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow. By weaving the personal stories of twelve young Germans into the larger fabric of Nazism and World War II, Bartoletti elevates understanding of Hitler's strategic plans of manipulation to a new level and offers contemporary youth the opportunity to question the choices they might have made in the same situation."

2006 Sibert Committee
American Library Association

    • Newbery Honor winner, 2006
    • Sibert Honor winner, 2006
    • Orbis Pictus Honor winner, 2006
    • Sydney Taylor Notable, 2006
    • Parents’ Gold Choice Award
    • Pennsylvania Carolyn Field Award
    • A Junior Library Guild selection for middle grade and young adult audiences.
    • IRA Notable Book for a Global Society, 2006
    • CBC/NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 2006
    • Publisher’s Weekly Best Children’s Books of the Year 2005
    • Kirkus Editors’ Choice 2005
    • School Library Journal Best Books of the Year 2005
    • Book List Editors’ Choice
    • Book Links “Lasting Connections” 2005
    • Horn Book Fanfare Books 2005
    • New York Public Library—100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
    • Best Books for Young Adults Top Ten
    • ALA Notable Children’s Books
    • Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2006
    • VOYA Nonfiction Honor List
    • Six Starred Reviews: School Library Journal, Horn Book, Publisher’s Weekly, Book List, Kirkus, Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books

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