The second installment of a frontier trilogy that began with Auch’s Journey to Nowhere (1997) is the vivid story of courageous Mem Nye, who faces responsibilities that would tax a strong adult. In the Genesee Country of western New York, where the Nyes moved from Connecticut to make a decent living farming, the planting and growing season of 1816 has been plagued by unexpected frosts. One after another of Papa’s corn plantings turns black; he’s out of seed and nearly out of resources. Far worse than the crops is Mama’s mental state; after giving birth to a child she doesn’t even name, she slips into homesickness and depression, and abandons all maternal and domestic responsibilities. Mem names the baby Lily, shoulders Mama’s chores and her own, and attempts to keep up with her studies and her dream of becoming a schoolteacher. Papa, hoping to keep the family’s troubles private, becomes increasingly taciturn, and is angry when Mem writes her grandmother for help. Tragedy all but inevitably strikes when Mama and Lily disappear into the bitterly cold countryside, where Mama dies. Mem comes through it all and proves an even stronger character than she seemed in the previous book, facing her work with plenty of worry, but very matter of fact about the necessity of toiling on. Readers will have to wait for the third book to see if the surprising outcome—Papa plans to return to Connecticut—holds, making this a refreshing, highly realistic entry in pioneer fiction. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8050-4923-1
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
13
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In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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PROFILES
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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