A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love.
In 1905, a family fleeing pogroms comes to rural North Dakota.
Shoshana loves Liubashevka, her village in what’s now Ukraine, though she misses her barely remembered father and older brother, off in “Nordakota.” Liubashevka is getting dangerous for Jews, though: Cossacks gave Mama a head injury, and if Papa and 17-year-old Anshel were here, they’d be conscripted into the tsar’s army. So they journey to America, Shoshana sneakily acquiring a kitten en route. With Shoshana, older sister Libke, and the 3-year-old twins, Papa’s prairie dugout is crowded, but it’s good to have the family together again. Still, Shoshana feels the constant pressure of being different: Her Yiddish-speaking family isn’t allowed credit at the general store, and the bullying boys at the one-room schoolhouse call her hateful slurs. Wouldn’t it just be easier to celebrate Christmas? Wouldn’t the boys be nice if she just wasn’t Jewish anymore? Frequent parallels to the Little House series accentuate how different Shoshana’s experience is from the White, Christian, mythically American lives of her classmates. A friendly interaction with a Dakota girl allows Shoshana to feel anger for the displaced Dakota (though she doesn’t ponder the relationship between that displacement and her own family’s safe refuge). A moving, gently kind coming-to-America story.
A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love. (author’s note, references) (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781454947844
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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