As timely as historical fiction can be
Rosetta’s life changes when a 16-year-old refugee from the Nazis comes to live with her.
A grade six girl in 1942 Montreal, narrator Rosetta has two sisters, but she hadn’t expected to gain an older brother. Isaac fled Hitler’s Germany on the Kindertransport but was later interned by the British government. Now freed, he’s alone in a foreign country. Isaac’s entry into Rosetta’s family isn’t frictionless: Rosetta squabbles with her sisters, she’s jealous of Isaac’s relationship with her father, and she snoops in his few possessions. But she and Isaac grow close, and what she learns about his past is worrying. Rosetta is from a family of light-skinned observant Jews and is ignorant of religious segregation or persecution. Isaac, with one Jewish parent and one Christian, saw his own mother—a tall, blonde, blue-eyed “Aryan goddess” who works for the Nazis—repudiate him. Even in theoretically liberal-minded Montreal, Isaac’s not free of persecution. Jewish quotas will likely keep him from attending medical school at McGill. Moreover, Rosetta’s best friend’s brother, a handsome blond non-Jew, says vile anti-Semitic things to Isaac. Italicized, phonetically rendered accents (“So, one afternoon, I vent der”) keep Isaac at arm’s length even as Rosetta grows closer to him, and there’s more than one “remarkable coincidence” holding the whole together, but readers will respond to how flawed, likable Rosetta learns how to welcome refugees wholeheartedly.
As timely as historical fiction can be . (Historical fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-4043-9
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
It’s not the first time old Ben has paid our times a call, but it’s funny and free-spirited, with an informational load that...
Antics both instructive and embarrassing ensue after a mysterious package left on their doorstep brings a Founding Father into the lives of two modern children.
Summoned somehow by what looks for all the world like an old-time crystal radio set, Ben Franklin turns out to be an amiable sort. He is immediately taken in hand by 7-year-old Olive for a tour of modern wonders—early versions of which many, from electrical appliances in the kitchen to the Illinois town’s public library and fire department, he justly lays claim to inventing. Meanwhile big brother Nolan, 10, tags along, frantic to return him to his own era before either their divorced mom or snoopy classmate Tommy Tuttle sees him. Fleming, author of Ben Franklin’s Almanac (2003) (and also, not uncoincidentally considering the final scene of this outing, Our Eleanor, 2005), mixes history with humor as the great man dispenses aphorisms and reminiscences through diverse misadventures, all of which end well, before vanishing at last. Following a closing, sequel-cueing kicker (see above) she then separates facts from fancies in closing notes, with print and online leads to more of the former. To go with spot illustrations of the evidently all-white cast throughout the narrative, Fearing incorporates change-of-pace sets of sequential panels for Franklin’s biographical and scientific anecdotes. Final illustrations not seen.
It’s not the first time old Ben has paid our times a call, but it’s funny and free-spirited, with an informational load that adds flavor without weight. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-93406-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Warmhearted cross-cultural friendship for a refugee on distant shores: both necessary and kind.
In 1938, a Jewish refugee from Poland joins her father in small-town Cuba.
After three years abroad, Papa’s saved only enough money to send for one of his children. Thus Esther boards the steamship alone even though she’s not quite 12. Cuba is a constant surprise: Her father’s an itinerant peddler and not a shopkeeper; they live as the only Jews in a tiny village; and she’s allowed to wear sandals and go bare-legged in the heat. But the island is also a constant joy. Nearly everyone Esther meets is generous beyond their means. She adores her new trade as a dressmaker, selling her creations in Havana to earn money to bring over the rest of the family. In glowing letters to her sister back in Poland, Esther details how she’s learning Spanish through the poems of José Martí. She introduces her sister to her beloved new friends: a White doctor’s wife and her vegetarian, atheist husband; a Black, Santería-following granddaughter of an ex-slave; a Chinese Cuban shopkeeper’s nephew. Esther’s first year in Cuba is marked by the calendar of Jewish holidays, as she wonders if she can be both Cuban and a Jew. As the coming war looms in Europe, she and her friends find solidarity, standing together against local Nazis and strike breakers. An author’s note describes how the story was loosely inspired by the author’s own family history.
Warmhearted cross-cultural friendship for a refugee on distant shores: both necessary and kind. (bibliography) (Historical fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-51647-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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