Most Holocaust stories for children focus on the inhumanity that took place in European countries; fewer deal with the severe hardships experienced by children sent to America and their struggles to assimilate into a foreign culture. Based on the experiences of the author’s mother as part of the One Thousand Children project, this empathetic historical novel rings with authenticity. Edith Westerfeld is 12 when her parents send her from their German home to America. Almost half of the story takes place aboard the ship as she and the other lonely refugee children turn to each other to ease their fears. Life in Chicago is filled with discrimination; even her aunt treats her like a servant. The one bright spot is following Hank Greenberg’s baseball career, but wearing her mother’s Star of David doesn’t keep him from being drafted or bring her parents to America (they die in concentration camps). The title’s significance is revealed on the last page: As Edith mourns the loss of everything, she realizes that to honor her parents she must be willing to live. Moving. (Historical fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-17744-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
From England’s Children’s Laureate, a searing WWI-era tale of a close extended family repeatedly struck by adversity and injustice. On vigil in the trenches, 17-year-old Thomas Peaceful looks back at a childhood marked by guilt over his father’s death, anger at the shabby treatment his strong-minded mother receives from the local squire and others—and deep devotion to her, to his brain-damaged brother Big Joe, and especially to his other older brother Charlie, whom he has followed into the army by lying about his age. Weaving telling incidents together, Morpurgo surrounds the Peacefuls with mean-spirited people at home, and devastating wartime experiences on the front, ultimately setting readers up for a final travesty following Charlie’s refusal of an order to abandon his badly wounded brother. Themes and small-town class issues here may find some resonance on this side of the pond, but the particular cultural and historical context will distance the story from American readers—particularly as the pace is deliberate, and the author’s hints about where it’s all heading are too rare and subtle to create much suspense. (Fiction. 11-13, adult)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63648-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
The best day of Michael Mackenzie's life becomes the worst when the bullet he exuberantly fires into the air during his 17th birthday party comes down a mile away and kills a man. When he hears the story on the radio, the news hits him like a lightning bolt. Numbly following the advice of his best friend, Joe, he buries the rifle and tries, without much success, to get on with life. So does the victim's 15-year-old daughter, Jenna, who had been present when the bullet struck. Switching between Michael's point-of-view and Jenna's, McDonald (Comfort Creek, 1996) sends the two teenagers dancing slowly toward each other, using mutual acquaintances, chance meetings at parties and the community pool, and glimpses at a distance. Both go through parallel phases of denial, both are tortured by remorse, exhibit behavior changes, and experience strange dreams; both eventually find ways to ease their grief and guilt. When the police close in, Joe takes the blame, giving Michael the nerve to confess. In the final chapter, McDonald shifts to present tense and brings Michael and Jenna to a cathartic meeting under a huge sycamore said in local Lenape legend to be a place of healing—an elaborate and, considering the suburban setting and familiar contemporary characters, awkward graft in this deliberately paced but deeply felt drama. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-32309-3
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
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