by Dawn Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2010
An apocalyptic series with an evangelical subtext kicks off with this high-octane thrill ride. Five pre-teens were best friends once, sharing a mystical bond transcending race and class. But that was seven years ago, before something horrible happened: something that they can’t remember, that tore them apart, that sent them drifting into crime, drugs and despair; something that is now stalking their nightmares, drawing them back together to become embroiled in an ancient battle between angels of light and darkness. The plot is cleverly constructed with short chapters dissolving present and past, creating a phantasmagoric effect that constantly ratchets up the adrenaline level. While the heroes are sympathetic and fundamentally decent, they are presented with a graphic realism uncommon in Christian fiction and seem far older than their supposed years. The large cast, many sporting sound-alike or exotic names, can be confusing, and it’s not quite clear exactly what happens at the climax beyond a busload of setup for future books. Still, the combination of vivid cinematic detail, gritty adolescent angst and spectacular supernatural kickassery should prove irresistible. (Horror. YA)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-310-71433-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Zondervan
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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by Dawn Miller
by Cambria Gordon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2021
A charming Jewish love story set against the bleak backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition.
In Trujillo, in the Spanish Kingdom of Castile in 1481, Isabel is a Crypto-Jew; she and her family maintain their Jewish faith in secret.
The Inquisition is gaining control, but 16-year-old Isabel, who has a passion for writing poetry, thinks that as New Christians her family is safe. The family converted to Christianity and were baptized in the hope of making their lives easier and more secure. However, like many other Jews in Spain at the time, they privately practice Judaism—attending church on Sundays but conducting Shabbat dinners every Friday night. They think their secret is safe, but the head Inquisitor, Fray Tomás Torquemada, is now targeting conversos for their private Judaizing. When Isabel is betrothed against her will to the powerful and ruthless alguacil, or sheriff, Don Sancho, Isabel’s parents believe that the upcoming marriage will save them from persecution. But when handsome aristocrat Diego warns Isabel that she is in grave danger from the Inquisition and especially from her husband-to-be, Isabel is determined to save her family, herself, and the man she loves—and live an openly Jewish life filled with poetry. This historical romance is a fast-paced, plot-driven tale with feminist main characters whom readers will root for from the very beginning.
A charming Jewish love story set against the bleak backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition. (author’s note, photos, research notes, poetry citations, further reading) (Historical fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-63418-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon
by Vesper Stamper ; illustrated by Vesper Stamper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 20, 2018
Evil that is impossibly difficult to comprehend and filled with word-images that will leave readers gasping. The author’s...
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Gerta didn’t know she was Jewish until she and her father were taken for transport by the Nazis.
When Bergen-Belsen is liberated, Gerta and the other survivors are ill, skeletal, dying, or sunk in madness, and they have no homes to which they can return. Relating the events that led her there, she tells of a seemingly carefree life in Würzburg with her musician father and German gentile stepmother, an opera singer who is also Gerta’s voice teacher. But they were living with false identification papers, and their lives become ever more withdrawn. She has fleeting visions of her early childhood in Köln, of her mother, and of Kristallnacht. The cattle-car journey to Theresienstadt is only the beginning of days, weeks, months, years filled with unspeakable horrors in the “intricacies of the Nazi web…the animalization of human souls.” Then comes Auschwitz, where her father is gassed, then Bergen-Belsen, typhus, and, finally, a kind of awakening to her own humanity. Later she covertly enters British-occupied Palestine, Eratz Yisrael, and builds a life there. Stamper spares readers nothing. Everything that Gerta witnesses or experiences really happened in the hell that was the Holocaust, including the further humiliations in its aftermath, a rarely told part of the story. The text is on pale, sepia-toned paper with dark, eerie illustrations in the same tones, reminiscent of real drawings produced by camp inmates.
Evil that is impossibly difficult to comprehend and filled with word-images that will leave readers gasping. The author’s dedication says it all, in both Hebrew and English: “Remember.” (author’s note, map, glossary, resources, acknowledgments; not seen) (Historical fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-0038-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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by Norman H. Finkelstein ; illustrated by Vesper Stamper
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by Vesper Stamper ; illustrated by Vesper Stamper
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by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman ; illustrated by Vesper Stamper
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