Although this new Holocaust survivor novel tells much the same story as some of the other books about a family’s trials during WWII, the style is slightly different. It’s told from the point of view of 12-year-old Eva Zilverstijn, and is in the present tense. But it is told about Eva, as though the subject is also the observer. The result is that the narration captures the inner thoughts of the child while remaining somewhat distant. Eva and her sister Lisa, nine years old, were born in Groningen, Holland, the great-great-grandchildren of Polish-Jewish emigrants. Now it’s 1940, the Germans have invaded Holland, and the lives of Jewish residents will never be the same. Eva and Lisa must now think of themselves as Marie-Louise and Marie-Jeanne Dutour, Huguenots. They will spend the next five years in hiding, fleeing from one house to another, never really sure whom to trust. The people who hide them are ordinary citizens who have no special feelings one way or the other about Jews, but will “do whatever it takes to go against those Nazis.” The girls are separated from their parents soon after they begin to hide, and they won’t know what happened to them until the war ends. Living through experiences that would surely destroy them if they did not have a tremendous amount of inner strength, by the end of the war they have proven themselves unusually resourceful as well as brave. On the other hand, they are still children, and find that when they are finally free to go outside, they can’t. Not for a day or two, anyway, since it is still too scary. Outside, and without a star! Two poems included in the book were written by Vos’s mother, and Vos and her sister carried them from one house to another, much as Lisa and Eva do in the story. This is a compelling tale, interestingly told, and will be a useful addition to the growing body of children’s literature about the Holocaust. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-16283-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Taking a page from Avi’s The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (1990), Kehret (I’m Not Who You Think I Am, p. 223, etc.) pens a similar story of a girl who goes to sea. Determined not to be separated from her seriously ill mother, Emma, 12, embarks on a plan that results in the adventure of a lifetime. Sent to live with Aunt Martha and her arrogant son, Odolf, Emma carefully plots her escape. Disguising herself in her cousin’s used clothes, she sneaks out while the household slumbers and stows away on what she believes to be a ship carrying her parents from England to the warmer climate of France. Instead, the ship is the evil, ill-fated Black Lightning, under the command of the notorious Captain Beacon. Emma finds herself sharing quarters with a crew of filthy, surly, dangerous men. When a fierce storm swamps the ship, Emma desperately seizes her chance to escape, drifting for several days and nights aboard a hatch cover and finally carried to land somewhere on the coast of Africa. Hungry, thirsty, and alone, Emma faces the daunting prospect of slow starvation, but survives due to a relationship she builds with a band of chimpanzees. This page-turning adventure story shows evidence of solid research and experienced plotting—the pacing is breathless. Kehret paints a starkly realistic portrait, complete with sounds and smells of the difficult and unpleasant life aboard ship. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-03416-2
Page Count: 138
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201378-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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