Readers will need the Kleenex for this one.
The bubonic plague brings added misery and death to European Jews.
Natan is the 17-year-old son of a Jewish ragman in 14th-century Strasbourg. His family ekes out a precarious living in a city rampant with anti-Semitism. When the bubonic plague races across Europe, the Jews are at even greater risk than usual, accused of poisoning wells and causing the deaths. Natan has fallen in love with Elena, the Christian daughter of his father’s business associate—a forbidden love. When he witnesses town hoodlums throwing a dead cat into a well, he is murdered. His soul, now an ibbur, enters the body of Hans, a Christian who works for Elena’s father. (An ibbur “occurs when a righteous person’s soul takes up residence in another’s body.”) Natan is now tasked with trying to save the Jews of Strasbourg. He desperately tries to enlist the help of the Ammeister, head of the city council, but to no avail. Elena tries equally hard to understand that her love inhabits the body of a boy she does not like. Wiseman tells her tragic tale alternating the voices of Natan and Elena. It is a heart-rending tale based on actual events, which saw the Jews of the city almost entirely murdered by being burned alive.
Readers will need the Kleenex for this one. (author’s note, glossary) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-716-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Evocations of Narnia are not enough to salvage this fantasy, which struggles with thin character development.
A portal fantasy survivor story from an established devotional writer.
Fourteen-year-old Eva’s maternal grandmother lives on a grand estate in England; Eva and her academic parents live in New Haven, Connecticut. When she and Mum finally visit Carrick Hall, Eva is alternately resentful at what she’s missed and overjoyed to connect with sometimes aloof Grandmother. Alongside questions of Eva’s family history, the summer is permeated by a greater mystery surrounding the work of fictional children’s fantasy writer A.H.W. Clifton, who wrote a Narnialike series that Eva adores. As it happens, Grandmother was one of several children who entered and ruled Ternival, the world of Clifton’s books; the others perished in 1952, and Grandmother hasn’t recovered. The Narnia influences are strong—Eva’s grandmother is the Susan figure who’s repudiated both magic and God—and the ensuing trauma has created rifts that echo through her relationships with her daughter and granddaughter. An early narrative implication that Eva will visit Ternival to set things right barely materializes in this series opener; meanwhile, the religious parable overwhelms the magic elements as the story winds on. The serviceable plot is weakened by shallow characterization. Little backstory appears other than that which immediately concerns the plot, and Eva tends to respond emotionally as the story requires—resentful when her seething silence is required, immediately trusting toward characters readers need to trust. Major characters are cued white.
Evocations of Narnia are not enough to salvage this fantasy, which struggles with thin character development. (author’s note, map, author Q&A) (Religious fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593194454
Page Count: 384
Publisher: WaterBrook
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
A timely and well-paced story of personal discovery.
Time travel brings a girl closer to someone she’s never known.
Sixteen-year-old Kiku, who is Japanese and white, only knows bits and pieces of her family history. While on a trip with her mother to San Francisco from their Seattle home, they search for her grandmother’s childhood home. While waiting for her mother, who goes inside to explore the mall now standing there, a mysterious fog envelops Kiku and displaces her to a theater in the past where a girl is playing the violin. The gifted musician is Ernestina Teranishi, who Kiku later confirms is her late grandmother. To Kiku’s dismay, the fog continues to transport her, eventually dropping her down next door to Ernestina’s family in a World War II Japanese American internment camp. The clean illustrations in soothing browns and blues convey the characters’ intense emotions. Hughes takes inspiration from her own family’s story, deftly balancing complicated national history with explorations of cultural dislocation and biracial identity. As Kiku processes her experiences, Hughes draws parallels to President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban and the incarceration of migrant children. The emotional connection between Kiku and her grandmother is underdeveloped; despite their being neighbors, Ernestina appears briefly and feels elusive to both Kiku and readers up to the very end. Despite some loose ends, readers will gain insights to the Japanese American incarceration and feel called to activism.
A timely and well-paced story of personal discovery. (photographs, author’s note, glossary, further reading) (Graphic historical fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-19353-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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