A rich life too often flattened into dry chronology.
The story of one teen’s work spying for the Belgian resistance and French underground during World War II, this is a new edition revised and updated by Holocaust educator Stephen Feinberg.
On May 10, 1940, the German army bombed Brussels, and 15-year-old Roman Catholic Rostad’s life changed forever. After exposure to the horrors of war as a Red Cross volunteer, Rostad, code name Squirrel, became a saboteur in a Nazi-run factory where members of the resistance first contacted her. When fellow resisters went missing, she realized she must leave and join the Free Belgian Army in England. Heading toward Portugal, where she’d board a ship to England, she delivered intelligence, documents, and small arms. Just before crossing the border into Spain, however, news of a Spanish bounty on resisters forced her to remain in France, where she spent the rest of the war. The memoir covers the entirety of Rostad’s life, including her marriage to an American GI, immigration to the U.S., and commitment to educating people about the horrors of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, her account tends toward flat summary, and the authors display a preference for dwelling on happier times, providing more richly detailed anecdotes from Rostad’s Depression-era childhood than from her wartime efforts. Lengthy quotations and explanations of historical context slow the narrative. Nevertheless, given the dearth of teen literature spotlighting the resistance, this work represents a valuable resource for initiates seeking firsthand information.
A rich life too often flattened into dry chronology. (notes, discussion questions) (Nonfiction. 13-18)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781682753774
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Fulcrum
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys.
The acclaimed author of Between the World and Me (2015) reflects on the family and community that shaped him in this adaptation of his 2008 adult memoir of the same name.
Growing up in Baltimore in the ’80s, Coates was a dreamer, all “cupcakes and comic books at the core.” He was also heavily influenced by “the New York noise” of mid-to-late-1980s hip-hop. Not surprisingly then, his prose takes on an infectious hip-hop poetic–meets–medieval folklore aesthetic, as in this description of his neighborhood’s crew: “Walbrook Junction ran everything, until they met North and Pulaski, who, craven and honorless, would punk you right in front of your girl.” But it is Coates’ father—a former Black Panther and Afrocentric publisher—who looms largest in his journey to manhood. In a community where their peers were fatherless, Coates and his six siblings viewed their father as flawed but with the “aura of a prophet.” He understood how Black boys could get caught in the “crosshairs of the world” and was determined to save his. Coates revisits his relationships with his father, his swaggering older brother, and his peers. The result will draw in young adult readers while retaining all of the heart of the original.
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys. (maps, family tree) (Memoir. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984894-03-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love.
As palliative for his beloved Abuela's worsening dementia, memoirist Ogle offers her a book of childhood recollections.
Cast in episodic rushes of free verse and paralleling events chronicled in Free Lunch (2019) and Punching Bag (2021), the poems take the author from age 4 until college in a mix of love notes to his devoted, hardworking, Mexican grandmother; gnawing memories of fights and racial and homophobic taunts at school as he gradually becomes aware of his sexuality; and bitter clashes with both his mother, described as a harsh, self-centered deadbeat with seemingly not one ounce of love to give or any other redeeming feature, and the distant White father who threw him out the instant he came out. Though overall the poems are less about the author’s grandmother than about his own angst and issues (with searing blasts of enmity reserved for his birthparents), a picture of a loving intergenerational relationship emerges, offering moments of shared times and supportive exchanges amid the raw tallies of beat downs at home, sudden moves to escape creditors, and screaming quarrels. “My memories of a wonderful woman are written in words and verses and fragments in this book,” he writes in a foreword, “unable to be unwritten. And if it is forgotten, it can always be read again.”
A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love. (Verse memoir. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-01995-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
© 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.
