A warmhearted holiday tale successfully portrays an underrepresented corner of American Judaism—of African-American history,...
It’s a wintry spring in 1930 when an 11-year-old Jewish girl gets a lesson in friendship, the Jewish holidays, and America.
Miriam has always lived in Brooklyn, but now Papa and Mama are taking the long ship journey to escort family from the Old Country. For the time being, Miriam lives with her loving grandparents Bubby and Zayde on their farm in upstate New York. Instead of bialys and whitefish for breakfast, Miriam eats eggs she finds herself and warm milk “fresh from the cow.” The hired men who hop off the freight train are nice, and Miriam can have one of the barn cat’s kittens for her very own. Even her loneliness is abated when she meets the secret stranger hiding in the barn. Cissy, also 11, is the sister of one of the hired men. Joe doesn’t want Cissy to be sent to an orphanage, so she rides the rails with him from job to job in secret. Miriam explains the festivals of Purim and Passover to Cissy while learning a holiday lesson from Cissy’s friendship. The relationship between a white Jewish girl and a black girl from Mississippi is focused on Miriam’s inner life and chance to be a savior. Aside from some religious metaphors, this is not an exploration of interracial or cross-class friendships.
A warmhearted holiday tale successfully portrays an underrepresented corner of American Judaism—of African-American history, not so much. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4598-1425-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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