The world has no need of a Holocaust tale that presents Nazism as relatively benign.
An old-fashioned boys' adventure tale emerges from an almost unrecognizable retelling of a true Holocaust survival story.
Twelve-year-old Anton is a Jewish peasant in the Ukrainian village of Borshchiv. Anton's grandmother (evidently based on real-life heroine Esther Stermer, never named in the author's note) is sure the Nazis can't be trusted. In the dead of night, Anton and his family sneak away to hide in a nearby cave. Evil Gestapo officer Von Duesen is determined to make Borshchiv Judenfrei, completely free of Jews, and he's sure there's a Jewish family hiding around here somewhere. Von Duesen becomes increasingly unhinged throughout the year as Anton outwits him. He makes mean threats when Anton's grandmother spits in his face, and eventually he turns to murder, horrifying other Nazis by shooting some Jews in cold blood: " ‘Mein Gott, Herr Major...Was haben Sie getan?’ What have you done?" His Gestapo superiors even punish him for the murder, because of potential public relations damage. Of the historical and cultural inaccuracies permeating Anton's adventure, the most egregious is this portrayal of Nazis (who by 1943 in the real Borshchiv had shot or buried alive over 3,000 Jews, including one massacre of 1,800 that took three days, just months before Von Duesen's supposed crime).
The world has no need of a Holocaust tale that presents Nazism as relatively benign. (sources, author's note) (Historical fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-85782-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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