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Chance: Escape from the Holocaust: Memories of a Refugee Childhood
From a beloved voice in children’s literature comes this landmark memoir of hope amid harrowing times and an engaging and unusual Holocaust story.
With backlist sales of over 2.3 million copies, Uri Shulevitz, one of FSG BYR’s most acclaimed picture-book creators, details the eight-year odyssey of how he and his Jewish family escaped the terrors of the Nazis by fleeing Warsaw for the Soviet Union in Chance.
It was during those years, with threats at every turn, that the young Uri experienced his awakening as an artist, an experience that played a key role during this difficult time. By turns dreamlike and nightmarish, this heavily illustrated account of determination, courage, family loyalty, and the luck of coincidence is a true publishing event.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
With backlist sales of over 2.3 million copies, Uri Shulevitz, one of FSG BYR’s most acclaimed picture-book creators, details the eight-year odyssey of how he and his Jewish family escaped the terrors of the Nazis by fleeing Warsaw for the Soviet Union in Chance.
It was during those years, with threats at every turn, that the young Uri experienced his awakening as an artist, an experience that played a key role during this difficult time. By turns dreamlike and nightmarish, this heavily illustrated account of determination, courage, family loyalty, and the luck of coincidence is a true publishing event.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Audible Audio
Published October 13, 2020
1 person want to read
About the author
Uri Shulevitz
61 books104 followersUri Shulevitz was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. He won the 1969 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, an Eastern European fairy tale retold by Arthur Ransome in 1916.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 22, 2025
Audible Version Note: This graphic novel would lose a lot of its impact in the audio format. The illustrations are very precise and help a young reader to better understand the events. It would be helpful to have a copy of the graphic novel if you are planning to use the audio version so that you can see the impact of the illustrations along with the text.
This graphic novel was a very short and easy to read narrative about the Holocaust. I would recommend it to my middle school students. It would be a useful graphic novel in a middle grades classroom. It recounts the story of a refugee and all of the struggles that he and his family faced as refugees. They struggled to find a place to live and to moved around through a series of different places. They lived in Poland, Soviet occupied Poland, and the USSR (Russia and Turkestan). They faced many challenges finding and keeping employment and housing throughout the story.
The father worked hard and tried to obtain a visa to remain permanently in one place but the shifting political climate kept changing the family’s ability to be accepted in society. The father adopted the political views of the time such as supporting Lenin but then that was out of favor with some people. He worked in theaters but the money would run out at times and he had to change jobs to provide money for his family. The family had a few fortunate moments such as when someone told them not to go back to Poland. Sadly, most of the moments of the young boy’s life were unfortunate, filled with hardships and tragic.
The illustrations are very interesting and cleverly help to retell the story of the refuge experience. When the war ended, there was a powerful section about trying to find a train and the difficulty of obtaining passage. People waited weeks and months for a train going in the correct direction. The family had to take a series of trains and wait days, weeks, and even months to continue their travels. This helps to provide a narrative for how difficult it was to travel through Europe. Many of my students think about travel in the USA today and they can’t understand why people weren’t able to quickly move around the various cities within a country or from country to country. The ease, flexibility, and speed of travel today is not perfect but it would have been impossible in the 1940s during and after the war in Europe.
This graphic novel was a very short and easy to read narrative about the Holocaust. I would recommend it to my middle school students. It would be a useful graphic novel in a middle grades classroom. It recounts the story of a refugee and all of the struggles that he and his family faced as refugees. They struggled to find a place to live and to moved around through a series of different places. They lived in Poland, Soviet occupied Poland, and the USSR (Russia and Turkestan). They faced many challenges finding and keeping employment and housing throughout the story.
The father worked hard and tried to obtain a visa to remain permanently in one place but the shifting political climate kept changing the family’s ability to be accepted in society. The father adopted the political views of the time such as supporting Lenin but then that was out of favor with some people. He worked in theaters but the money would run out at times and he had to change jobs to provide money for his family. The family had a few fortunate moments such as when someone told them not to go back to Poland. Sadly, most of the moments of the young boy’s life were unfortunate, filled with hardships and tragic.
The illustrations are very interesting and cleverly help to retell the story of the refuge experience. When the war ended, there was a powerful section about trying to find a train and the difficulty of obtaining passage. People waited weeks and months for a train going in the correct direction. The family had to take a series of trains and wait days, weeks, and even months to continue their travels. This helps to provide a narrative for how difficult it was to travel through Europe. Many of my students think about travel in the USA today and they can’t understand why people weren’t able to quickly move around the various cities within a country or from country to country. The ease, flexibility, and speed of travel today is not perfect but it would have been impossible in the 1940s during and after the war in Europe.
Displaying 1 of 1 review