Sometimes overloaded with dry detail and better read as a forest adventure then a Holocaust narrative
A Jewish boy in the Netherlands spends World War II in hiding in this retelling of real-life events.
Walter, a 5-year-old German boy, doesn’t understand why his family flees to the Netherlands. It’s not an unpleasant life for the first few years. Even after he’s barred from attending school, he joyfully helps the local farmers with their work. The Underground is very helpful, spiriting first his grandmother and then his sick sister away to safer hiding spots. Constantly aided by the Underground and their helpful neighbors, Walter’s family moves time and time again. For over a year they live in a hidden village in the woods, in barracks built into the hillside, eating almost nothing. Through a mix of retrospective first-person narration (ostensibly in the form of stories told to a granddaughter) and wartime letters, readers see the eight years Walter spends whispering in secret bolt holes. Walter never understands Nazi anti-Semitism, and it’s neither explained nor shown in any detail; he scarcely encounters a single Nazi during the war, and anti-Jewish laws are mostly absent here. A one-paragraph author’s note lightly contextualizes the history (without identifying the tale as a biography of Ze’ev Bar, formerly Walter Bartfeld), though it does not provide any further information about the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Sometimes overloaded with dry detail and better read as a forest adventure then a Holocaust narrative . (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77260-061-2
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Wholesome shading to bland, but well-stocked with exotic creatures and locales, plus an agreeable cast headed by a child...
A San Diego preteen learns that she’s an elf, with a place in magic school if she moves to the elves’ hidden realm.
Having felt like an outsider since a knock on the head at age 5 left her able to read minds, Sophie is thrilled when hunky teen stranger Fitz convinces her that she’s not human at all and transports her to the land of Lumenaria, where the ageless elves live. Taken in by a loving couple who run a sanctuary for extinct and mythical animals, Sophie quickly gathers friends and rivals at Foxfire, a distinctly Hogwarts-style school. She also uncovers both clues to her mysterious origins and hints that a rash of strangely hard-to-quench wildfires back on Earth are signs of some dark scheme at work. Though Messenger introduces several characters with inner conflicts and ambiguous agendas, Sophie herself is more simply drawn as a smart, radiant newcomer who unwillingly becomes the center of attention while developing what turn out to be uncommonly powerful magical abilities—reminiscent of the younger Harry Potter, though lacking that streak of mischievousness that rescues Harry from seeming a little too perfect. The author puts her through a kidnapping and several close brushes with death before leaving her poised, amid hints of a higher destiny and still-anonymous enemies, for sequels.
Wholesome shading to bland, but well-stocked with exotic creatures and locales, plus an agreeable cast headed by a child who, while overly fond of screaming, rises to every challenge. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4593-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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