A warm and tender immigration tale that occasionally stumbles over its rhyming scheme.
Williams chronicles an immigrant family’s journey in this rhyming narrative for middle-grade readers.
The story is told from the perspective of Mina, whose family departs Basseterre, St. Kitts, for Orlando, Florida, “Green cards clenched in trembling hand.” Upon arrival in the U.S., Mina notes there are “No guava trees, no ocean breeze, / Just concrete stretching endlessly.” Mina’s father plants a guava tree at their new home, which stands as a metaphor for growth, rootedness, and resilience throughout the book. At school, Mina makes a friend named Chloe with whom she shares pieces of her home country, including Carnival dances, cricket, and a slushy drink called Frayco. In turn, Chloe introduces Mina to soccer, the library, and the state fair. The girls participate in a bake sale, a sports fundraiser, and a hiking trip. Mina’s parents make big strides in their respective careers. Though life is on the upswing, the family remains homesick. In a letter, Mina’s grandmother asks, “Does the food taste right, or does it feel wrong? / Do the trees sway there, do they hum a song?” Fears regarding their immigrant status and discrimination hover over the family, even after they become citizens. By the end of the book, Mina learns to include both St. Kitts and Florida in her definition of home: “Two worlds I carry, their love combined, / A bridge of hope, uniquely designed.” Williams’ lyrical poetry and chronological narrative make for a lovely, flowing middle-grade read. Abundant sensory details immerse readers in Mina’s surroundings, from her grandmother’s spice-scented scarf to the monkeys’ chatter outside to the snap of a suitcase closing. Mina’s emotional honesty in lines like “my heart’s still home, split in half” invites readers to consider how straddling two cultures feels. The rigid rhyming scheme sometimes results in unnatural expressions, such as, “We search for coconuts in a local store, / But they’re hard as rocks, their taste a chore.” The narrative’s lack of time stamps also makes it difficult to situate the events within a broader societal context.
A warm and tender immigration tale that occasionally stumbles over its rhyming scheme.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781962776073
Page Count: 222
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe.
If Anne Frank had been a boy, this is the story her male counterpart might have told. At least, the very beginning of this historical novel reads as such.
It is 1939, and Yanek Gruener is a 10-year old Jew in Kraków when the Nazis invade Poland. His family is forced to live with multiple other families in a tiny apartment as his beloved neighborhood of Podgórze changes from haven to ghetto in a matter of weeks. Readers will be quickly drawn into this first-person account of dwindling freedoms, daily humiliations and heart-wrenching separations from loved ones. Yet as the story darkens, it begs the age-old question of when and how to introduce children to the extremes of human brutality. Based on the true story of the life of Jack Gruener, who remarkably survived not just one, but 10 different concentration camps, this is an extraordinary, memorable and hopeful saga told in unflinching prose. While Gratz’s words and early images are geared for young people, and are less gory than some accounts, Yanek’s later experiences bear a closer resemblance to Elie Wiesel’s Night than more middle-grade offerings, such as Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. It may well support classroom work with adult review first.
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-45901-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Sensitive subject matter that could have benefited from a subtler, more sober touch.
A Jewish girl joins up with Polish resistance groups to fight for her people against the evils of the Holocaust.
Chaya Lindner is forcibly separated from her family when they are consigned to the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. The 16-year-old is taken in by the leaders of Akiva, a fledgling Jewish resistance group that offers her the opportunity to become a courier, using her fair coloring to pass for Polish and sneak into ghettos to smuggle in supplies and information. Chaya’s missions quickly become more dangerous, taking her on a perilous journey from a disastrous mission in Krakow to the ghastly ghetto of Lodz and eventually to Warsaw to aid the Jews there in their gathering uprising inside the walls of the ghetto. Through it all, she is partnered with a secretive young girl whom she is reluctant to trust. The trajectory of the narrative skews toward the sensational, highlighting moments of resistance via cinematic action sequences but not pausing to linger on the emotional toll of the Holocaust’s atrocities. Younger readers without sufficient historical knowledge may not appreciate the gravity of the events depicted. The principal characters lack depth, and their actions and the situations they find themselves in often require too much suspension of disbelief to pass for realism.
Sensitive subject matter that could have benefited from a subtler, more sober touch. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-14847-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
