by Barbara Rogasky & illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2005
From Jewish folklore comes this tale of a restless spirit that enters the body of a living being. Wealthy Sender wants the best for his daughter, Leah, and arranges a marriage with a rich man. When she meets poor scholar Konin, however, they fall instantly in love. Neither knows that fate had decreed their love match before they were born. Their respective fathers, once best friends, had made a solemn pact that their children would someday marry. Doleful consequences ensue when Sender breaks his promise: Konin dies of anguish; Leah invites his ghost to the wedding; he inhabits her body on the day she is to be married; and an exorcism is performed. The moral lesson is a Romeo and Juliet–like ending, in which Leah joins Konin in death. Rogasky’s retelling, seemingly narrated by an oral storyteller, is strong and to the point and filled with Yiddish and Hebrew words, inflections and religious references; Fisher’s monochromatic paintings of shtetl life are vigorous and dramatic. (Folklore. 11-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-8234-1616-X
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2005
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edited by Barbara Rogasky & photographed by Marc Tauss
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adapted by Barbara Rogasky & illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman
by Carol Matas ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 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
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More by Carol Matas
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by Carol Matas
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by Carol Matas
by Robert Roper ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1991
Its focus firmly on the details of mountaineering in the French Alps and the Himalayas—mechanics, technique, lore, social milieu—a simplistic novel about an unlikely superheroine (though already making record-breaking climbs while still in her teens, her only major injury occurs early on when a guide hazes her by giving her a double load) who achieves worldwide recognition for her exploits in the 1950's. The tacked-on plot—minor setbacks, a romance with another climber—has less depth than most comic strips and reads like an old-fashioned adulatory biography. Roper is obviously well-acquainted with climbing, and for anyone interested in the subject there's a wealth of information here; he should have omitted the feeble story and added an index. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-316-75606-7
Page Count: 188
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
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