Sometimes overloaded with dry detail and better read as a forest adventure then a Holocaust narrative
A Jewish boy in the Netherlands spends World War II in hiding in this retelling of real-life events.
Walter, a 5-year-old German boy, doesn’t understand why his family flees to the Netherlands. It’s not an unpleasant life for the first few years. Even after he’s barred from attending school, he joyfully helps the local farmers with their work. The Underground is very helpful, spiriting first his grandmother and then his sick sister away to safer hiding spots. Constantly aided by the Underground and their helpful neighbors, Walter’s family moves time and time again. For over a year they live in a hidden village in the woods, in barracks built into the hillside, eating almost nothing. Through a mix of retrospective first-person narration (ostensibly in the form of stories told to a granddaughter) and wartime letters, readers see the eight years Walter spends whispering in secret bolt holes. Walter never understands Nazi anti-Semitism, and it’s neither explained nor shown in any detail; he scarcely encounters a single Nazi during the war, and anti-Jewish laws are mostly absent here. A one-paragraph author’s note lightly contextualizes the history (without identifying the tale as a biography of Ze’ev Bar, formerly Walter Bartfeld), though it does not provide any further information about the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Sometimes overloaded with dry detail and better read as a forest adventure then a Holocaust narrative . (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77260-061-2
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
A work of heavy, realistic fiction told with oddball humor, honesty, and heart.
When Korean-American Ok Lee loses his father in a construction accident, he and his mom must fend for themselves financially while quietly grieving.
Middle schooler Ok watches as his mother takes on multiple jobs with long hours trying to make ends meet. Determined to help, he sets his sights on his school’s talent show. The winner takes home $100 in cash, enough to pay the utilities before they get cut off. His search to find a bankable talent is complicated by unwanted attention from bully Asa, who’s African-American, and blackmail at the hands of a strange classmate named Mickey, who’s white. To make matters worse, his mother starts dating Deacon Koh, “the lonely widower” of the First Korean Full Gospel Church, who seems to have dubious motives and “tries too hard.” Narrator Ok navigates this full plot with quirky humor that borders on dark at times. His feelings and actions dealing with his grief are authentic. Most of the characters take a surprising turn, in one way or another helping Ok despite initial, somewhat stereotypical introductions and abundant teasing with racial jokes. Although most of the characters go through a transformation, Ok’s father in comparison is not as fleshed-out, and Asa’s African-American Vernacular English occasionally feels repetitive and forced.
A work of heavy, realistic fiction told with oddball humor, honesty, and heart. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1929-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist.
With Rumpelstiltskin and his band of villains still on the loose, the students and staff of Fairy Tale Reform School are on high alert as they prepare for the next attack.
Classes are devoted to teaching battle techniques and conjuring new weapons, which narrator Gilly finds preferable to learning history or manners. But Maxine, her ogress friend, has had it with all the doom and gloom. The last straw is when the agenda at the Royal Lady-in-Waiting meeting is changed from “How to Plan the Perfect Fairy Garden Party” to designing flying rocks and creating flower darts. While on a class field trip to the village to investigate their future careers, Maxine finds a magic lamp housing a genie named Darlene. Her wish that everyone be happy works a little too well. War preparations are put on hold as the school fills with flowers, laughter, and plans for a musical production. But when Gilly is tapped to fill in for the local chief of the dwarf police, things really take a turn for the worse. The students, including fairies, ogres, and the part-human/part-beast offspring of Beauty and the ex-Beast, focus on friendship and supporting one another in spite of their differences. Humility, forgiveness, and loyalty are also highly regarded in the FTRS community. Human Gilly is white, but there is racial as well as species diversity at FTRS.
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5167-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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