In a third book about the Platts, who fled Germany in Journey to America (1970) and built a new life in L.A. in Silver Days (1989), youngest daughter Annie, 13, is attending a Quaker camp in WW II's last weeks. Still weak from an appendectomy, Annie blossoms at camp, easily making friends (especially with Tallahassee, an African-American in her cabin); enjoying a crush on a junior counselor; becoming a favorite of the director; and starting a camp newspaper. Troubles echoing the world outside don't loom large, but, still, after Annie plays a cruel prank on an obnoxious, racist camper, her conscience troubles her. Home again, Annie finds her family in disarray: Ruth's soldier, traumatized by seeing the death camps, jilts her; rebelling at Papa's close supervision, Lisa moves out; and when Tallahassee visits, Papa—already in turmoil because of his daughters' new independence—reveals his own racism. The conclusion—Annie confronts Papa (``You are just like the Nazis. This is why there are wars!''), then runs away, back to camp, where she realizes her own limitations before coming home for a reconciliation—is overtidy (Annie does have a lot of epiphanies at once); but, still, the lessons are valuable and the end is satisfyingly dramatic. Not as strong as its predecessors, but Platt family friends won't want to miss it. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-689-31752-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-590-46920-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
If Rotten Ralph were a boy instead of a cat, he might be Joey, the hyperactive hero of Gantos's new book, except that Joey is never bad on purpose. In the first-person narration, it quickly becomes clear that he can't help himself; he's so wound up that he not only practically bounces off walls, he literally swallows his house key (which he wears on a string around his neck and which he pull back up, complete with souvenirs of the food he just ate). Gantos's straightforward view of what it's like to be Joey is so honest it hurts. Joey has been abandoned by his alcoholic father and, for a time, by his mother (who also drinks); his grandmother, just as hyperactive as he is, abuses Joey while he's in her care. One mishap after another leads Joey first from his regular classroom to special education classes and then to a special education school. With medication, counseling, and positive reinforcement, Joey calms down. Despite a lighthearted title and jacket painting, the story is simultaneously comic and horrific; Gantos takes readers right inside a human whirlwind where the ride is bumpy and often frightening, especially for Joey. But a river of compassion for the characters runs through the pages, not only for Joey but for his overextended mom and his usually patient, always worried (if only for their safety) teachers. Mature readers will find this harsh tale softened by unusual empathy and leavened by genuinely funny events. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-33664-4
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
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