This adapted story of a Kindertransport survivor doesn’t hang together.
A young teen goes on the Kindertransport from Austria to England and makes a new life.
Lisa, 14, is studying piano when she must leave Vienna in late 1938 because of the Nazis. She eventually lands in London, living in a Willesden Lane hostel with 32 other young people while she awaits her sister’s arrival. She works in a clothing factory but never forgets her passion for music. Luckily, there is a piano in the hostel, and after learning about auditions for the Royal Academy of Music, Lisa wins a spot. Without parents or money, she eventually makes her debut with the assistance of the Academy and her friends. Only in the epilogue is the sad story of her parents told. This true story was recounted by pianist Golabek—Lisa’s daughter—and Cohen in The Children of Willesden Lane (2003). Adapted by Robbins as a chapter book from Emil Sher’s 2017 young readers’ edition, the text reads like a novel and is punctuated by abundant unsourced and likely fictionalized dialogue, both internal and external. Occasional nonfiction insets offer context but are too cursory to help readers really understand “What is Nazism?” and other topics—though robust backmatter will help those children who avail themselves of it. The faces in the Ivanovs’ black-and-white illustrations feel too jaunty and cartoonlike for this somber topic. The book does, however, effectively portray Lisa’s love for her instrument and her will to live and find her family members.
This adapted story of a Kindertransport survivor doesn’t hang together. (map, photographs, discussion questions, activities, timeline, historical note, resources) (Biography. 8-11)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-46307-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
It’s an often-told story, but the author is still in a position to give it a unique perspective.
The author of Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America (2004) tells her father’s tale again, for younger readers.
Though using a less personal tone this time and referring to herself in the third person, Robinson still devotes as much attention to his family life, youth and post-baseball career as she does to his achievements on the field. Writing in short sentences and simple language, she presents a clear picture of the era’s racial attitudes and the pressures he faced both in the military service and in baseball—offering plenty of clear reasons to regard him not just as a champion athlete, but as a hero too. An early remark about how he ran with “a bunch of black, Japanese, and Mexican boys” while growing up in Pasadena is insensitively phrased, and a sweeping claim that by 1949 “[t]he racial tension was broken” in baseball is simplistic. Nevertheless, by and large her account covers the bases adequately. The many photos include an admixture of family snapshots, and a closing Q-and-A allows the author to announce the imminent release of a new feature film about Robinson.
It’s an often-told story, but the author is still in a position to give it a unique perspective. (Biography. 8-10)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-54006-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate.
Stepping carefully around the controversies, a former curator at Monticello reconstructs the septuagenarian Jefferson’s active daily round.
Jefferson’s fixed routine begins with a faithful recording of temperature and weather at first rising and ends with a final period of solitary reading by candlelight in his unusual alcove bed. In between, the author describes in often fussy detail the range of his interests and enterprises. There’s not only his “polygraph” and other beloved gadgets, but also meals, family members, visitors, and excursions to Monticello’s diverse gardens, workshops and outbuildings. Like the dialogue, which mixes inventions with historical utterances, the generous suite of visuals includes photos of furnishings and artifacts as well as stodgy full-page tableaux and vignettes painted by Elliott. The “slaves” or “enslaved” workers (the author uses the terms interchangeably) that Jefferson encounters through the day are all historical and named—but Sally Hemings and her Jeffersonian offspring are conspicuously absent (aside from a brief name check buried in the closing timeline). Jefferson adroitly sidesteps a pointed question from his grandson, who accompanies him on his rounds, by pleading his age: “The work of ending slavery is for the young.”
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate. (sidebars, endnotes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0541-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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