Begin Your Journey With The Extra Created By Kathryn Lasky In Electronic Format

don't usually read young adult books, but I really enjoyed this historical fiction book about a young gypsy girl that played a double for Hitler's favorite actress.
Full Disclaimer, I was sent this by Walker books for an honest review,

year old Lilo is a gypsy girl, living in Vienna in the's, When her and her family are rounded up by the Nazi's and sent to a camp,
Hilter's favorite movie director, Leni Riefensthal, visits the camp, looking for Gypsy extra's for a movie she is making,

This was a really interesting read, as it had the elements of real life to it, Leni Riefensthal, was a really person, she really did visit camps, to cast Gypsy extras for her movie Tiefland, in thes while the war was on.


We can often forget, that the Nazi's didn't just go after the Jews, all non "Master Race" were attacked, Including Gypsys, Disabled, Gay, old, ect ect,

The visual and emotional description in this book, is compelling and very well written,
one piece i feel shows this, is the description of a morning, about half way through the book,

" the moon and were gone, the sun not up yet, there was only a vast nothingness, As though god were yawning, a huge, abyssal yawn, "

You see the story through the eyes of Leni, her character is very, matter of fact, No punches are pulled, from the more gruesome moments of her story, To her sometimes, absent moments, She sees and feels everything, but at times she cannot deal with what is happening, So she just goes through the motions, I really liked this aspect of the writing, as it felt very true to life,

A lot of accurate history has been put into this book, and I have to say, It was an unexpected, very enjoyable read, The ending was balanced just right as well, I really, really wanted to like this book more than I did, This is a new and different take on a holocaust story, and it is a story that needs to be told but, unfortunately, it is not as well written as Lasky's best work.
In particular, the pacing is very problematic, I have found that good pacing is something that is super important for kids, most of whom have very little patience when a story drags or tension is lost.
Lose the rhythm of your story, and your reader may not wait for you to find the beat again, Still, I was glad I read it, and I do think there will be an audience for this book among the many young people who have a strong interest in holocaust stories.
I wanted to like this book bc it is such an unusual angle on the Holocaust, There arent a lot of Roma/Sinti perspective books, Also, the story of Leni Riefenstahl is also rarely seen in young adult books, Unfortunately, I feel like the plot was a bit of a mess, particularly in the last half, It feels like the first part was setting up for a certain pace and then there was a page limit and the rest of Lilos experience several years worth was sped through to fit constraints.
It was a little bizarre and made events in the end of the book the lastreally feel like a flip book, I also feel like it didnt quite capture the horrors of the Holocaust, I can understand not going into full detail in a book for kids, but you cant sugarcoat it quite this much because they wont know how to feel when they DO learn the whole truth.
That being said, I loved the characters of Lilo and her mother and felt the exploitation of the “gypsies” by Riefenstahl was beautifully portrayed.
Its not a bad book for young people, but there are better options, The Extra by Kathryn Lasky is the tale of a young Sinti girl living in Vienna during World War II, At the beginning, she is still able to go to school and live in her house, though the Nazi government is keeping tracking of all Gypsy families.
However, they soon change their minds which send Lilo and her parents to a series of internment camps, One of which is where Lilo and her mother find a temporary escapebeing extras in a movie,

The director Leni Riefenstahl is creating a movie about a Spanish woman living in a small village, To add authenticity to the movie, Lilo and her mother, along with a handful of other Gypsy prisoners including Django, the one who can find out anything, are given the chance to be in the movie.
Although the work is not difficult, they are all kept imprisoned within a farmer's barn and continue to be fed as little as possible.
Though Lilo knows Leni is a vicious woman, she plays the part she is assigned and cooperates until she has her moment to escape.
But there's no telling what will happen once she does,

This book, though the subject matter can be hard at times, is a realistic look into the lives of one of the groups that were brutalized for who they were during World War II.
Through Lilo's eyes readers get a glimpse of the reallife Leni Riefenstahl and the privileges she had because of her connection to the Nazi government.
This is a mustread for anyone who is interested in World War II and learning about the lives that were so deeply impacted during the war.


er received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads Is the chance to serve as an extra for Hitlers favorite filmmaker a chance at life or a detour on the path to inevitable extermination

One ordinary afternoon, fifeenyearold Lilo and her family are suddenly picked up by Hitlers police and imprisoned as part of the "Gypsy plague.
" Just when it seems certain that they will be headed to a labor camp, Lilo is chosen by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to work as a film extra.
Life on the film set is a bizarre alternate reality, The surroundings are glamorous, but Lilo and the other extras are barely fed, closely guarded, and kept in a locked barn when not on the movie set.
And the beautiful, charming Riefenstahl is always present, answering the slightest provocation with malice, flaunting the power to assign prisoners to life or death.
Lilo takes matters into her own hands, effecting an escape and running for her life, In this chilling but ultimately uplifting novel, Kathryn Lasky imagines the lives of the Gypsies who worked as extras for the real Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, giving readers a story of survival unlike any other.
Could have used another whole book just about the second half of her life didn't love how rushed the end felt, Bad writing, completely horrible dialogue, I was excited to read about gypsies in the holocaust, but it fell so so flat, This was unreadable. I'm not quite sure what rating to give this, While I liked it, the writing did feel it was more at the Y end of the YA genre, Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, but some of the content is fairly adult for a younger reader, And so sad.
I kept almost putting this aside several times, I think the writing style simply didn't grab me, I think because it is written in third person, there is a bit of distance between the reader and the action, perhaps purposely done, but this didn't quite work for me.
I wish there had been more connection with Lilo,
This tells the littleknown story of European gypsies being used as extras in a movie made by Leni Reifenstahl, the favorite moviemaker for the Nazis.
And all I can really say without spoiling the book is that evil has many faces, some of them quite beautiful,
I'd have liked for there to be a bit more story, for some resolution for Lilo and what she hopes for, I think just an epilogue one way or the other, would have been a better ending, However, it might have been too sad and perhaps the author didn't want to end on what might be such a sad note.

So, all in all, I think this is a very interesting subject matter, but perhaps I could have enjoyed the actual telling more, so I'll give it a three.
Yeah, a three.
An important novel as it tells the plight of Romani/Gypsy people during the Second World War and ensuing holocaust,

Lilo is a likeable character, who I rooted for all throughout the novel, Her journey felt a touch unrealistic that she kept finding good fortune until I read that it is rooted in a true story.
It explores the range of humanity in such a dark period of history and it is heartening to see the good juxtaposed with the bad.
The episode in Salzburg felt a little too good to be true but, again, such things genuinely happened,

All young people and old of course should be reading this in order to put history into a personal context, Sometimes when a book fails, it fails from not from what it did do but what it didnt,

Due to my vehement opposition to recent Goodreads policy changes, I will no longer be posting full reviews on this site.
TO READ MY FULL REVIEW, GO TO: sitelink shaelit. com/review Average one. But a very interesting side, I have always read wwii fiction where jews are the victims, It is the first book where the victims ae gypsies and I have gathered some little yet meaningful knowledge about their lifestyles, struggles and culture.


Moreover the story is not very intriguing yet heart wrenching, I was umming and arring betweenandthe whole way through this book, It was a good idea and it told a part of history that I had never come across before, However, it all kinda seemed a bit too docile, . . every bad thing glazed over, And isn't the whole thing about Nazi war camps the fact that they were horrible places

To be honest from the moment I started this book.
. . I knew it wasn't what I fancied, Although the adding in of German added an interesting element, . . in this situation I found it just didn't work, There were so many words that I could even attempt to sounds out that I ended up just glazing over what would add up to be quite a sizeable chunk of the book.
Furthermore I couldn't remember anyone's names! Which kind of made it really confusing, I also found that I had no attachment to the characters, This book didn't really make me feel anything,

So all in all, good, less told, basic idea hence the two, But lacking in emotional attachment and that wow factor that comes when you find a brilliant author, While this story had potential and explored an important element of the past, the novel lacked emotional depth, The jilted scene cuts that passed across lengthy periods of time felt awkward and confusing, The novel may have been stronger if it focused more on the filming process and going into more depth behind the scenes, rather than trying to include undeveloped threaded details across a longer stretch of time.
This started out with lack of emotion for me, It could have had depth, It had potential, but the storytelling was scattered, The emotion and tension of the book did not seem to build until aroundpages and towards the closure of the story, Even then, it seemed lackluster and disappointing, which is sad, because this story has so much promise,

And the ending, if we must call it that, lacked resolution and seemed to end in the middle of the conclusion.
I feel like I am missing at least another twenty pages to wrap this story nicely, Instead, the resolution is abrupt,

If this could have been told differently, if the scenes had been described differently, . . For example, the character deaths or disappearances were stated matterafact that it seemed to lose its power through its storytelling, It was missing the emotion, the depth, the rawness of the moment, the reflection,

As I have stated over and over, many of elements of this book were lacking for me, and that is how I would describe this entire read as a whole as well: lacking and disappointing.


I love the historical fiction roots and the author's note explaining its fact and fiction, I enjoyed what the author took liberty with, but this story could have been more thoughtfully approached rather than missing its cohesion, depth, and

emotion.
SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD

To be honest I am not sure how I feel about this book and that's why I gave it three.


It wasn't a bad book, I've read worse, But at the same time it wasn't a good book,

I didn't like it because I thought her descriptions of the Holocaust were either too sugar coated or there were none at all.
The Holocaust is such a disgusting, horrific topic to write about, and I expected more from her writing, I mean come on! Use paragraphs!!! I couldn't tell wether or not the scene has changed or the time has changed.
And SPOILER ALERT when she was hiding in Marta's house I thought she was there for a few months!! Not years!!! But the absolute worse was when she was in Ravensburg.

At start of the chapter and it was two years since her being found and she just got the medical surgery that she had been trying to avoid the whole time! And the details of how she felt and her experiences before weren't even stated!!
I can understand if she didn't want to get into detail about what exactly happened during the operation but she probably should have given some sort of back ground story, like I don't know told about her being selected for the surgery, and her feelings towards it.
Because given by the way she had Lilo talk about it, it almost seemed like she didn't even think about it,

There were a couple of good plot twists along the way, And I like the fact there was a bit of romance, but it didn't cover up the main idea of the story, And a few more redeeming qualities, that made this story okay, .