The Extra

by Kathryn Lasky

Overview

“A well-researched and uncompromising stand-alone novel focusing on the Nazi genocide of the Roma and Sinti peoples.” —Publishers Weekly

In this chilling but ultimately uplifting novel, Kathryn Lasky imagines the lives of the Romani—called the “Gypsy Plague” by the Nazis—who worked as extras for Hitler’s real favorite filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Fifteen-year-old Lilo and the other extras are barely fed, closely guarded, and kept in a locked barn when not on the movie set. And Riefenstahl is always present, answering the slightest provocation with malice, flaunting the power to assign prisoners to life or death. When faced with a rare opportunity, Lilo takes matters into her own hands, effecting an escape and running for her life, giving readers a story of survival unlike any other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763680176
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/08/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	660L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

 

Editorial Reviews

[A] touching story of survival.
—Kirkus Reviews

Lasky delivers a well-researched and uncompromising standalone novel focusing on the Nazi genocide of the Roma and Sinti peoples. ... Lasky’s novel is thorough in its attention to detail, mixing facts like Riefenstahl’s awful behavior toward her charges with the horrific lives of the fictional characters. … [B]etween the constant, appalling brutality of the camps and Lilo’s growth over the years, Lasky draws remarkable depth, realism, and even charm out of a bleak story.
—Publishers Weekly

Lasky’s introduction of a historical character, who really was Hitler’s favorite filmmaker, gives a unique twist to an otherwise oft-told tale. Her characters are well realized, as well... Touches of humor provided by a camp-smart boy offer a little relief. Above all, Lasky’s accessible style balances the grim realities of a Nazi camp with a girl’s enduring will to survive — a girl who comes of age among some of history’s greatest horrors.
—VOYA

Lasky has written a harrowing and deeply moving novel that focuses attention on a seldom-told story of the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate the Romani people. Thoroughly researched and insightful, the book is ideal for classroom use and discussion.
—Booklist

The war’s Gypsy genocide is undertreated in literature for youth, and this brings the plight of the Zigeuner during the Holocaust (or, in their terms, the devouring) into sharp relief; the irony of the layers of deception and fiction that drove the Nazi regime will not be lost on YA readers.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Inspired by actual events, Lasky’s intense novel exposes readers to the atrocities endured by Gypsies during World War II, specifically those who worked on the film Tiefland. ... [The story] convey[s] the horrors she witnesses with frightening clarity.
—School Library Journal

Exposing the experiences of non-Jews at the hands of the Nazis, Lasky spotlights a group that is rarely focused on. Lilo also experiences medical experiments, and she discovers that both good and bad Nazis exist. This book is a welcomed addition to any children’s history collection. The ability to see the Holocaust from another point of view is also a benefit, showing that it was not only the Jews who were interned and exterminated.
—Library Media Connection

This is a Holocaust narrative that is rarely told and Lasky delivers with a deft hand, powerfully and poignantly. The mix of actual history and fictional protagonist works seamlessly. ... This is absolutely a book worth reading and discussing.
—Jewish Book World

[R]ealistic dialogue and evocative imagery.
—The Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter

From the Publisher

2013-09-01
The rarely told story of the Nazi genocide of the Romani people unfolds through the eyes of a heavily fictionalized "film slave," a Romani girl forced into service as an extra in a Leni Riefenstahl film. Lilo is 15 when the Nazis cart her family off to a concentration camp. She'd assumed they were safe--settled, urban, skilled Sinti, unlike Roma who traveled in caravans and were easier targets of bigotry. But there's no safety in Buchenwald or Maxglan, where her mother is the subject of sadistic procedures and her father vanishes in the night. In a stroke of luck, she's taken to be a forced extra, a film slave in the backdrop of Leni Riefenstahl's film Tiefland. Along with the other Romani imprisoned by Riefenstahl, Lilo fights to stay alive in circumstances less extreme than the camps but still horrific. Filmmaking details provide a unique flavor in a tragic story that's otherwise all too familiar. Amid death and torment, Lilo encounters unexpectedly frequent sparks of human decency. Conveyed in at-times overly expository prose, Lilo's story is fiction laid upon the life of actual Romani Holocaust survivor Anna Blach. Context is provided by a deeply problematic author's note, which dedicates more than four pages to Riefenstahl but only three sentences to the modern Romani, mentioning neither the modern reality of anti-Romani bigotry nor the simple fact that "Gypsy" (used through the note as synonymous with "Romani") is now considered pejorative and should be avoided. In the end, the touching story of survival carries readers over the occasional infelicities. (Historical fiction. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews