A valuable instrument for parents who want to teach Christian principles to kids.
A fantastical debut children’s book evokes the New Testament.
While fishing, Aaron and Evelyn Freeman save a young boy from drowning and carry him home. He doesn't seem capable of speech and is terrified of light. Their parents, Clara and William, lovingly accept him and name him Chris, but shortly thereafter, goblins invade the house and demand to leave with Ilissa, their 11-month-old daughter. According to the goblin in charge, Maruffo, it is their right to bring her to their underworld lair. William defiantly refuses and is killed by the goblins, who then take Ilissa and burn the house down. Clara flees with the remaining three children to Aunt Sarah and Cousin Freddy’s house and reveals a series of shocking truths: she’s not really Aaron and Evelyn’s mother, nor was William their father. She found them when they escaped the underground cave governed by goblins—just as Chris once did—and the couple decided to raise them as their own. Wilfred deftly describes the tug of war between humans and goblins in narrative terms clearly modeled on biblical history, providing vivid details. The goblins are former angels who rebelled against their beneficent creator, Abba, and are now obsessed with destroying mankind. Abba, in order to save humans from bondage, came down to Earth in the form of a slave and sacrificed himself so he could produce a hole in the cave through which humans could escape, an event referred to as the Emancipation. The Brotherhood, a group comprised of former slaves, is the caretaker of written histories much like the Bible. Wilfred meticulously re-creates principal New Testament stories in a way likely to be digestible by young children. He also helpfully includes discussion questions at the conclusion of the book as pedagogical tools for parents (for example, “What would be the best part of adding a new member to your family?”). But some of the plot—there’s a decadelong war between humans and goblins—doesn’t seem all that didactically useful if the overarching point is a first encounter with central Christian ideas.
A valuable instrument for parents who want to teach Christian principles to kids.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-9625-4
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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