An accessible and absorbing portrait of empathy, character, and moral courage, relevant for modern times.
A Christian family housekeeper puts herself at risk when she becomes the main caretaker for three Jewish sisters in World War II Ukraine.
Twelve-year-old Eldina “Dina” Sternik is a Jewish girl living in Proskurov, in Soviet Ukraine, when the Nazis take over in 1941. Dina’s first-person narrative brings readers directly through the loss of freedoms experienced by Ukrainian Jews, as the park, school, and market become off-limits and Jews must wear yellow Stars of David on their clothing whenever they go out. After a fire leaves them homeless, Nina, their Christian housekeeper, registers the children as her own so that the Sternik family may receive alternative housing and not be identified by their true religion. The contrast between Nina’s treatment of the Sterniks and the hostility shown by Dina’s estranged uncle’s Christian wife speaks volumes of the importance of the righteous individual. Nina treats them as the family that she never had and cares for the children for several years once their mother is imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto. Reminiscent of Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars (1989), this is Kacer’s third novel in the Heroes Quartet series and is based on the true story of Nina Pukas, named one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
An accessible and absorbing portrait of empathy, character, and moral courage, relevant for modern times. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77321-354-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This middle-grade story of family, friendship and school has all the right elements, but it lacks an ignition spark.
A Rube Goldberg namesake discovers there’s more to life than inventions.
Fifth-grader Ruby Goldberg spends more time thinking about elaborate contraptions than about school or the people around her. Determined to win the gold medal that has eluded her in earlier science fairs, she focuses all her attention on the construction of her entry, ignoring her patient best friend’s needs and her grieving grandfather’s feelings. But there’s hope that, like the cartoonist and inventor she was named for, she can become a more well-rounded person. At her father’s suggestion, she collaborates with classmate Dominic, a former rival. Working together leads to friendship, and their intricate system for the delivery of a newspaper and slippers is, indeed, an engineering marvel—though she comes to understand it will never replace her grandfather’s dog. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite all come together, despite Ruby’s appropriately self-centered and sometimes-funny narration. By her own account, Ruby has been supercompetitive for years; her sudden behavior changes are therefore not quite credible. Ruby’s inventive mind is interesting, though the actual diagrammed workings of her Tomato-Matic 2000 are sadly opaque (thank goodness the narrative describes it).
This middle-grade story of family, friendship and school has all the right elements, but it lacks an ignition spark. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8027-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
This middle-grade read is heartfelt, but nostalgia that’s a bit too on the nose makes it hard to follow
Twelve-year-old aspiring astronaut Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman is lonely and homesick in New York.
When trouble hits her family like an asteroid, Ebony-Grace, aka Cadet E-Grace Starfleet, is forced to leave her beloved grandfather and her hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, to spend a week with her father in Harlem, New York—or as she calls it, “No Joke City.” Determined to ignore what she calls the “Sonic Boom,” New York’s hip-hop revolution in the early 1980s, Ebony-Grace rejects the people, music, and movements of Harlem, instead blasting off in her mind aboard the Mothership Uhura to save her grandfather, Capt. Fleet. Stuck, Ebony-Grace works to navigate a new frontier where she is teased and called “crazy” because of her imaginative intergalactic adventures. Ostracized as a flava-less, “plain ol’ ice cream sandwich! Chocolate on the outside, vanilla on the inside,” Ebony-Grace tries her best to be “regular and normal,” but her outer-space imaginings are the only things that keep her grounded. The design includes images that sho nuff bring the ’80s alive: comic-strip panels, inverted Star Wars scripting, and onomatopoeic graffiti-esque words. Unfortunately, these serve to interrupt an already-crowded narrative as readers hyperjump between Ebony-Grace’s imagination and the movement of life in the real world, transmitted via news reports and subway memorials.
This middle-grade read is heartfelt, but nostalgia that’s a bit too on the nose makes it hard to follow . (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-18735-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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