Eighth-grader Christopher Huh creates a Polish-born Jewish grandfather for his graphic novel for kids, ‘Keeping My Hope’

Graphic novelist Christopher Huh. (photo credit: courtesy)

From The Times Of Israel:  “Keeping My Hope” brings to mind Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Holocaust that features animal figures as stand-ins for humans. That book’s existence came as news to Huh when a teacher mentioned it to him sometime after he had begun working on his own book. “I started writing before I knew about Maus,” Huh says. “I was pretty impressed with Art Spiegelman; it’s not everyday you can see a book like that,” he says, adding that while Spiegelman’s is an adult book, his is intended for those in middle school and older.

“I want kids my age and up, even adults to read this,” says Huh, who like his protagonist is the youngest of three children, plays piano and has an optimistic outlook on life.

Huh explains he focused his novel on a grandfather talking to his granddaughter, a girl about his age, in the hope that kids his age will relate to the story. “If kids are reading this, they could think of their own grandparents,” he says.

He’s never met an Auschwitz survivor, although he has met relatives of people who had been in the camps, as well as a man who survived the war after being sent from Vienna to England on a kindertransport. Huh said he thought it important to focus on someone from Poland since that had Europe’s largest Jewish population prior to the Holocaust.

His seventh-grade English teacher sings her student’s praises. “He is extremely talented and has empathy and maturity beyond his years,” Denise Stup says in an email.

“I was amazed at how he captured the emotions of the characters both in writing and visually,” she says, noting that as a member of the county’s middle school text Evaluation and Selection Committee, she plans to nominate the book for curriculum inclusion.

Cover of Christopher Huh’s ‘Keeping My Hope’ (photo credit: courtesy)

As for Huh, he’d like to earn enough money from the book so that he can visit Poland and see Auschwitz for himself.

His father, who said the book brought tears to his eyes, has a different idea for the proceeds. “I hope his book becomes popular and maybe we can translate it into Asian languages,” Gary Huh says. “In Asia, people don’t know much about the Holocaust.”

What did Chris’ friends think about his project? When he initially told them he was working on the book, the reaction was, he reports, “OK; that’s cute.”

Once the book came out: “Whoah!”

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Categories: Jewish History

Tags: Holocaust