Book excerpt: Updated paperback edition with new Author's Note! How could we leave the only world we had ever known? Parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins-all were holding hands, clinging to one another, as if they'd never let go. A story that is more relevant than ever, as parents in our war-torn world are forced to rip their families apart and send their children away to safety. It's 1938, and twelve-year-old Edith is about to move from the tiny German village she's lived in all her life to a place that seems as foreign as the moon: Chicago, Illinois. And she will be doing it alone. This dramatic and chilling novel about one girl's escape from Hitler's Germany was inspired by the experiences of the author's mother, one of fourteen-hundred children rescued by Americans as part of the One Thousand Children project. * "This book is an exceptional story of survival and devotion to homeland... This is a wonderful study of the Holocaust in a way that young readers will understand. Highly Recommended." -Library Media Connection "Chapman captures a plucky determination in Edith that readers will find endearing. There is no Cinderella ending for Edith, but the hope...and the honesty in her story make this historical fiction well worth reading." -Publishers Weekly - A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year - A YALSA Best Fiction Nominee - A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best - A Junior Library Guild Selection - Booklist's 1000 Best Young Adult Books since 2000 BONUS MATERIALS INSIDE! Features a discussion guide, Q&A with the author, and a special look at the remarkable true story as seen on the Oprah network, OWN.