An accessible entry in a crowded, vital field, honoring those who risked everything to save others.
Liberated from the Soviets by the Nazis: Frying pan, meet fire.
When the German army marches into Krystia’s Ukrainian town, everyone greets the soldiers as liberators. Kind Mrs. Segal, ethnically Ukrainian Krystia’s Jewish neighbor, takes a lovely photograph of Krystia flinging a flower into the air as they celebrate their rescuers. The local Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians (considered ethnic groups at the time, not nationalities or religions, as Krystia makes quite clear) are perhaps excessively naïve about the goodwill of the invading Germans, as seen through Krystia’s optimistic eyes. But that hope is soon shattered, as the Nazis, like the Soviets before them, take any property they desire and hold human life cheap. Ukrainians and Poles are wretched subhumans to the Nazis, unfit for schooling or any life but labor—but that’s nothing on how they treat the local Jews. On a trumped-up charge, the Nazi commandant arrests 101 Jewish men and has them shot. Krystia sees her neighbors buried in a mass grave and their meager clothing given to ethnic German interlopers. Shockingly, the situation only deteriorates from there, as the Nazis execute their solution to the “Jewish Question.” The first-person account, based on the real-life Krystia’s memories as told to Skrypuch, reads like a memoir; despite the historically accurate body count, it retains a sense of hope.
An accessible entry in a crowded, vital field, honoring those who risked everything to save others. (historical note) (Historical fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-31053-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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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