Expressive but incomplete; share it with other Holocaust books or lots of caregiver context.
Women in Auschwitz secretly make a birthday gift.
This historical piece uses a frame story with a temporal double-remove: a first-person narrator looks back to the time “When I was young” and learned about her mother’s Holocaust experience. Narrator Sorale is a blank; her mother, Fania, is the real protagonist, turning 20 in the Nazi camp. Fania’s friends, despite the danger, craft her “a tiny book shaped like a heart, no bigger than a butterfly,” filled with handwritten messages. Sorale and Fania (white and Jewish) have awkwardly frozen faces and stiff hands in the frame story’s illustrations, but Rudnicki shows Auschwitz’s oppressiveness hauntingly in tertiary blues and pale, rusty orange-beiges. His rows of prisoners in stripes, with similar faces and skin creepily matching the backgrounds, powerfully evoke dehumanization and even imply disappearance. However, readers unfamiliar with the Holocaust won’t get all of that. They’ll absorb the fear, crowding, hunger, and cold of Auschwitz, but the “great darkness” that stole Fania’s family remains enigmatic—gassing and mass extermination are unmentioned. Death looms explicitly but not the scope or means—the threat sounds individual. Fania’s friends’ fates are unaddressed. An author’s note adds some historical detail and photographs of the actual book, which lives at the Montreal Holocaust Museum.
Expressive but incomplete; share it with other Holocaust books or lots of caregiver context. (author’s note) (Picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77260-057-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A smart, fresh take on an old favorite makes for a terrific series kickoff
A modern Sherlock Holmes retelling brings an 11-year-old black John Watson into the sphere of know-it-all 9-year-old white detective Shelby Holmes.
John's an Army brat who's lived in four states already. Now, with his parents' divorce still fresh, the boy who's lived only on military bases must explore the wilds of Harlem. His new life in 221A Baker St. begins inauspiciously, as before he's even finished moving in, his frizzy-haired neighbor blows something up: "BOOM!" But John's great at making friends, and Shelby certainly seems like an interesting kid to know. Oddly loquacious, brusque, and extremely observant, Shelby's locally famous for solving mysteries. John’s swept up in her detecting when a wealthy, brown-skinned classmate enlists their help in the mysterious disappearance of her beloved show dog, Daisy. Whatever could have happened to the prizewinning Cavalier King Charles spaniel? Has she been swiped by a jealous competitor? Has Daisy’s trainer—mysteriously come into enough money to take a secret weekend in Cozumel—been placing bets against his own dog? Brisk pacing, likable characters, a few silly Holmes jokes ("I'm Petunia Cumberbatch," says Shelby while undercover), and a diverse neighborhood, carefully and realistically described by John, are ingredients for success.
A smart, fresh take on an old favorite makes for a terrific series kickoff . (Mystery. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68119-051-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
A fun-if-flimsy vehicle for science lovers.
A fifth grade girl brings her love of chemistry to the school play.
Kate loves science so much she’s determined to breathe fire. Of course she knows that she needs adult supervision, and so, with her science teacher’s help, Kate demonstrates an experiment with cornstarch and a blowtorch that nearly sets her teacher’s cactus on fire. Consequences ensue. Can someone who loves science as much as Kate does find pleasure spending her fall break at drama camp? It turns out that even the school play—Dragons vs. Unicorns—needs a chemist, though, and Kate saves the day with glue and glitter. She’s sabotaged along the way, but everything is fine after Kate and her frenemy agree to communicate better (an underwhelming response to escalating bullying). Doodles decorate the pages; steps for the one experiment described that can be done at home—making glittery unicorn-horn glue—are included. The most exciting experiments depicted, though, include flames or liquid nitrogen and could only be done with the help of a friendly science teacher. Biberdorf teaches chemistry at the University of Texas and also performs science-education programs as “Kate the Chemist”; in addition to giving her protagonist her name and enthusiasm, she also seems represented in Kate-the-character’s love of the fictional YouTube personality “Dr. Caroline.” Kate and her nemesis are white; Kate’s best friends are black and South Asian.
A fun-if-flimsy vehicle for science lovers. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11655-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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