A gripping exploration of war-induced trauma, identity, and transformation.
A 12-year-old Ukrainian girl arrives in Canada after World War II and struggles to make sense of her jumbled memories of battle-scarred Germany.
After five years in a displaced persons camp, Nadia Kravchuk arrives in Brantford, Ontario, accompanied by her adoptive mother, Marusia. When Nadia’s fellow classmates are convinced by her blonde hair and blue eyes that she is a Nazi, Marusia repeatedly assures Nadia that’s not the case. Eventually, Nadia safely relives her trauma in order to solve the puzzle of who she really is—not Nadia Kravchuk nor Gretchen Himmel, the German identity she assumed to survive, but someone else entirely…Larissa, the younger sister of Lida, the protagonist of Skrypuch’s Making Bombs for Hitler (2016). The author once again deftly sheds light on lesser-known aspects of the Ukrainian experience during WWII. Via flashbacks and nightmares, she gradually fleshes out Nadia’s painful history of abduction from her original family and subsequent placement in a German household. As further explained in the author’s note, this was part of the Lebensborn program, an effort to identify and mark blond and blue-eyed Ukrainian children as Aryans and force them to live with Nazi families in order to augment the building of a master race.
A gripping exploration of war-induced trauma, identity, and transformation. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-23304-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Oozing with fun.
The new kid in town finds himself caught up in a slime-selling battle.
Twelve-year-old Alex Manalo is passionate about two things: slime and business. So when he and his dad (his mother has died) move from Silicon Valley to Sacramento to take over his grandparents’ struggling Filipino market, he is excited that they’ll have their own business. Being the new kid isn’t easy, and while Alex isn’t sporty or tall like the popular kids at his old school, he soon discovers that his new middle school is big on slime. Alex makes all kinds of slime with different ingredients, textures, and smells, garnering the attention of his classmates. A new friend convinces him to sell his slime, but that spurs a slime war with the girl who holds the slime monopoly at school. It isn’t going to be easy, especially when his dad thinks slime is a waste of time and that Alex should be playing soccer. With his hands in many different activities, Alex fights to win sticky battles with his family, new friends, and himself. Respicio has written an exciting, fast-paced story of friendship, family, and community. Throughout the book, Alex often struggles to make his opinions heard, but he eventually finds his voice and understands what it really means to be a winner. Alex and his family are Filipino; there is diversity in the supporting cast. The book includes different slime recipes.
Oozing with fun. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30267-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Imaginative, fast-paced, and fun.
Character Indira Story lives in the fictional town of Origin and aspires to a plot of her own.
She works hard to make her dream come true: to travel to the city of Fable and attend Protagonist Preparatory, a school where famous characters such as Alice (from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Romeo Montague train aspirants to become successful characters in actual stories. Ultimately, succeeding at Protagonist Preparatory would result in Indira’s being chosen by an Author in the Real World for their novel. Indira is determined to become a protagonist so that she can find her brother, David, a laborer in the town of Quiver, where he mines story nuggets. However, Indira fails her audition and begins to train as a side character. To make matters worse, her best efforts at school are sabotaged, and Fable itself is threatened. The question arises: Can a side character become a hero? Reintgen’s middle-grade debut is at once a fantastic adventure and a tribute to famous and popular literature. The plot feels rushed at times, but witty references—to literary characters and elements of the act of reading itself, like dog ears (envisioned as one-eared dogs who steal watches from anthropomorphic bookmarks)—make this novel enjoyable and laugh-out-loud funny. There is nothing intrinsically Indian about brown-skinned Indira (as her name suggests but as her equally brown-skinned brother’s does not), but her-far-from positive experiences remind readers of the importance of working hard at their own stories.
Imaginative, fast-paced, and fun. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-64668-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
