Rosner, J: The Yellow Bird Sings by Jennifer Rosner 2024 NEUF

What would happen if your five-year-old child was a musical prodigy who could hear symphonies in her head? What if you had to keep her silent and hidden for months during wartime in German-occupied Poland?

After all of the Jews in their town are rounded up and killed during WWII, Róza and her daughter, Shira, find themselves hiding in a farmers barn. Shira has difficulty staying still and quiet, as music pulses inside her. To pass the time, Róza tells Shira a story: There is a little girl who, with the help of her yellow bird, tends an enchanted garden. The garden must be kept silent--only the bird can sing the girls musical compositions--and together the girl and her bird avert many threats. Thus Róza manages to soothe Shira and shield her from the horrors around them. But then the day comes when their haven is no longer safe and Róza must face an impossible choice: whether to keep Shira by her side, or give her the chance to survive apart.

The Yellow Bird Sings is a powerful, beautiful, heartrending novel about the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter, and the triumph of hope and beauty even in the darkest of circumstances.

Jennifer Rosner is the author of the memoir If A Tree Falls: A Familys Quest to Hear and Be Heard. Her childrens book, The Mitten String, is a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable. Jennifers writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, The Forward, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere. She lives in western Massachusetts with her family.