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I don't know how that happened. But I have been writing long enough to know that when someone marches into your book, you have to stop and listen and ask, "Why have they done this? What are they trying to tell me? What is this story really about?" So instead of being this little idyll of a couple of French children on a French street, it became something else entirely.

On keeping the horror of the Holocaust off screen

Yes, in The Devil's Arithmetic, [the horror] is very much on screen; in another novel I wrote, Briar Rose, it's very much on screen; the new book that I'm working on, House of Candy, it's going to be very much on screen. But they're all books for older children, adults, college-age kids. That's OK.

In my feeling it's not OK to put ... blood dripping off the pages of a picture book. So that was a conscious decision.

On using Stone Angel to teach children about the Holocaust

I consider Stone Angel a kind of starting place for parents to talk to their kids, as much as they want to talk to them. I don't think this book is for under third-graders ... kindergarten, first, second, even though it's in a picture book format, because I don't think they're ready to have that conversation with their parents.

But by the time they're in third grade, they understand that there are people who die, there are animals who die, there are grandparents or great-grandparents who die. That may be a way to get into the book with the child. So this book becomes a kind of first setting for a child.

Excerpt: 'Stone Angel'

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Courtesy of Penguin Random House

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

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Courtesy of Penguin Random House

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

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Courtesy of Penguin Random House

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

Holocaust