There’s nothing earth-shatteringly original here, but readers who like their frothy romance with a bracing dash of serious...
Speech-and-debate summer camp provides a backdrop for romance and the fight against anti-Semitism.
Ellie Taylor has been a champion orator at her middle school and is looking forward to a summer honing her persuasive skills at the prestigious Christian Society Speech and Performing Arts summer camp at Benedict’s School. Her favorite, most reliable and endlessly maddening verbal sparring partner isn’t a kid, though, it’s her beloved grandfather, Zeydeh. Although Ellie assures Zeydeh that the camp is Christian in name only, her faith in both herself and her religion is tested when Mrs. Yeats, who endows the scholarship Ellie needs to win to afford attendance at Benedict’s, is revealed as a lifelong anti-Semite. (Naturally, Mrs. Yeats’ grandson Devon is Ellie’s debate partner and “sizzling” crush object.) Zeydeh and Mrs. Yeats both challenge Ellie to pick a side—her heritage or her future—provoking her to resort to a variety of realistically clumsy subterfuges before staking out her identity on her own, clear terms. More mature than Fiona Rosenbloom’s You Are SO Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2005) and less contemplative than Jenny Meyerhoff’s The Queen of Secrets (2010), Dominy’s debut balances light and heavy subject matter with ease.
There’s nothing earth-shatteringly original here, but readers who like their frothy romance with a bracing dash of serious social issues will be clamoring for seconds. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8027-2177-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
Well-educated American boys from privileged families have abundant options for college and career. For Chiko, their Burmese counterpart, there are no good choices. There is never enough to eat, and his family lives in constant fear of the military regime that has imprisoned Chiko’s physician father. Soon Chiko is commandeered by the army, trained to hunt down members of the Karenni ethnic minority. Tai, another “recruit,” uses his streetwise survival skills to help them both survive. Meanwhile, Tu Reh, a Karenni youth whose village was torched by the Burmese Army, has been chosen for his first military mission in his people’s resistance movement. How the boys meet and what comes of it is the crux of this multi-voiced novel. While Perkins doesn’t sugarcoat her subject—coming of age in a brutal, fascistic society—this is a gentle story with a lot of heart, suitable for younger readers than the subject matter might suggest. It answers the question, “What is it like to be a child soldier?” clearly, but with hope. (author’s note, historical note) (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58089-328-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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