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In My Enemy's House

  Summary of Book: In My Enemy's House was written by Carol Matas. This story follows a Jewish girl named Marisa who lives in Germany during World War II. A time when being a Jew seemed to be more a curse than a blessing. The story starts off when things are not all that dangerous for Jews yet. In other towns Marisa and her family hear about others being taken and moved to concentration camps, but Marisa and her family hope that they will be alright. Marisa is fortunate enough to be blonde and blue eyed, so with the help of a kind German, she is able to get papers and pretends to be Polish and takes the place of another girl and is offered a job with a German family to work. Marisa does not want to go, but her family is taken one day while she is out looking for food and the German friend tells her she has to go now. So she goes and lives with the German family and is treated very well, except the man of the house is a Nazi general and the children play games about killing Jews. After a while, their is an order for all Polish workers to be sent to factories to help make bombs and weapons. However, after bombings of the factory, she ends up back with the German family. The word ends finally, but Marisa stays with the family until she no longer can and decides to


go back home. She hears that their is a list of Jews who survived the war and those that died, she finds her boyfriends name, but sees many of her family has died including her parents and some siblings. So, she decides that she will go to her boyfriend and continue to search for her family in the end and become a great scholar like her father. 

Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would use this in my classroom as a way to go more in depth and give a better look into the life of a Jew from that time. It's a pretty educational book when you consider it. 

Appropriate age group for this book: 10-14

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: A way to use this book in a classroom would be to include it in a World War II Social Studies unit. The students could read it and then do a mini book report on it summarizing the story in their own words using the 5 W's. Or they could write about how the main character develops through the story. 

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