Children's ✦ Penny’s Take
Touch Wood
Renée Roth-Hano · 1989
76/100
👍 Worth It
Renée Roth-Hano's diary-format memoir captures the Holocaust through a nine-year-old's eyes with quiet, devastating clarity — the kind of primary-perspective account that makes history feel immediate rather than distant. The episodic structure means no neat dramatic arc, but the emotional authenticity and Kirkus and Publishers Weekly praise, plus decades of curriculum adoption, confirm this is the real thing for its intended middle-school audience.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
⚠ Parent note — our reviewers flagged: Holocaust trauma and persecution · Anti-Semitic laws depicted · Fear of death and separation. We still scored it 76; these are context for your family, not an automatic skip.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
Faith & family safety72
Substance / usefulness78
Craft & writing76
Originality74
Evidence & accuracy81
Hype vs delivers78
Age-fit66
👁 Human-eye gut-check76
Penny’s verdict76
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