TOGETHER AS ONE

This incredible work of middle grade nonfiction is about the determination, making sure history isn't forgotten, and the friendship between an unlikely pair.

When she was just fourteen years old, Claire Sarnowski stood up in front of the Oregon State Senate with her friend Alter Wiener, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor. The two had met five years earlier, when Claire saw Alter speak at a nearby school, and had been close friends ever since. It was a friendship of opposites: age, gender, religion - yet they immediately bonded over shared ideals. Alter had spent decades speaking at schools and libraries about the Holocaust, about how his entire family had been murdered, about how never forgetting could prevent it from happening again. But Claire knew hate crimes were still being committed -- in her own town and even in her own school. She didn't want Alter's efforts on Holocaust education to be in vain, so Claire contacted a state senator she knew through her family and the three of them went about drafting a bill proposal to make Holocaust education mandatory in all Oregon public schools.

Senate Bill 664 was passed in 2019 and it received national media attention, but that was only the first step for Claire. From fundraising for the National MS Society, to helping more communities launch their own genocide education initiatives with STAND: The Student-Led Movement to End Mass Atrocities, Claire is following her calling as an activist, and wants other kids to know that everyone is an activist in their own way and for their own causes. Together as One: A Girl, a Survivor and a Friendship That Changed History, a middle grade nonfiction proposal by Claire Sarnowski with Sarah Durand shows that we all can change things for the better, no matter who we are.

Claire Sarnowski is now a 15-year-old sophomore at Lakeridge High School. She is a top fundraiser for the National MS Society and was the student who spearheaded Senate Bill 664 (2019) which mandated Holocaust and Genocide Education in Oregon schools. Claire is the president of Key Club and French Club at her school and is a proud member of the French National Honor Society. Claire has been honored with awards from the Wholistic Peace Institute and the Anti-Defamation League, among others, and has been invited to give talks nationwide about Senate Bill 664 and her experiences as a student activist. She is also a national managing committee member for STAND: The Student-Led Movement to End Mass Atrocities. Claire lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon, with her parents.
Co-writer Sarah Durand is a New York Times bestselling collaborator whose projects include Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal by the late Renia Spiegel and her surviving sister, Elizabeth Bellak, Brave Adventures by YouTube phenomenon Coyote Peterson, Breakaway by US Women's Soccer star Alex Morgan, and My Shot by WNBA All-Star Elena Delle Donne. Before she became a writer, Sarah was an editor, with a sixteen-year career at Avon Books/William Morrow and Atria Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two young daughters.