by Anne Nesbet ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2016
While not fully absorbing, Nesbet’s detail-rich novel offers tenacious readers an interesting window into the fall of the...
A sudden adventure to East Germany changes Noah’s life forever—literally, as he assumes a new name and family history.
Swooped up by his parents after school one day, fifth-grade stutterer Noah must dump his backpack on the way to the airport and learn his “real” name and history so that his mother can take a sudden opportunity to conduct research in East Berlin. The white American boy becomes “Jonah” and experiences the world behind the Iron Curtain in 1989 with the help of a new German friend, Claudia, also white. Nesbet (The Wrinkled Crown, 2015, etc.) ventures from fantasy into a new genre and unpacks her story slowly, sometimes ponderously, by inserting “secret files” from an omniscient narrator who explains much of the context required to appreciate the history in the fiction. There is intrigue involving the reported death of Claudia’s parents and Noah’s suspicions about his own mother’s story, but the suspense and character development are bogged down by slow pacing. Noah’s stutter effectively portrays him as the misunderstood outsider, but his photographic memory becomes purely plot device as Nesbet unravels a belatedly thrilling ending. Her author’s note reveals the personal history behind the novel, suggesting a labor of love that does show in the carefully crafted details and effective scene-setting.
While not fully absorbing, Nesbet’s detail-rich novel offers tenacious readers an interesting window into the fall of the Iron Curtain. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8803-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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by Jane Yolen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2018
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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by Lauren Baratz-Logsted ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2010
Nineteenth-century servant girl Bet follows the classic cross-dressing adventure, disguising herself as a boy so she can attend school in a tale more Yentl than Mulan. Will is a 16-year-old upper-crust rapscallion, and Bet is the servant and companion who’s been raised side-by-side with him all her life. Will has been expelled from yet one more school when Bet proposes her cunning plan: Bet will take Will’s place, and Will can enter the military as he’s always dreamed. The plan goes off without a hitch. It’s too bad that Will’s current school, the Betterman Academy, is a dreadful place reserved for unredeemable boys. Luckily for Bet, her roommate, James, is a darling. This slim volume steps through all the required moments in the girl-disguised-as-a-boy genre, though one hopes the predictable moments of gay panic and safely heterosexual resolution will ring false to modern readers. This brief historical, solidly 20th century in feel, offers a perfectly pleasant romantic interlude for readers looking for bookish but light fare. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-22308-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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