CATCH A TIGER BY THE TOE

To most young people, the McCarthy era is a sidebar in a history text. Levine makes the story personal for one 13-year-old girl, one family, one school and community. She brilliantly portrays how the paranoia of McCarthyism undermined community life: teachers fired, books removed from public libraries, fights on the playground—not in Nazi Germany or Czarist Russia, but in New York City in 1953, shortly after the Rosenberg trial. In such a climate, young Jamie Morse feels the need to keep her mouth shut, her family’s leftist politics secret, because “you don’t want to stand out when you’ve got secrets.” Angry that her parents’ political leanings make it difficult to fit in at school, Jamie witnesses her father’s defiance of Senator Joseph McCarthy himself and for the first time feels proud. Ultimately, this is a fast-paced story that transcends its era to be all about facing down bullies, large and small, and should send a message about contemporary politics. (note to the reader, suggested reading) (Fiction. 10+)