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THE PROMISED LAND

Name: THE PROMISED LAND
Author: Neil Waldman
ISBN: 1-56397-332-4

THE BIRTH OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

by Neil Waldman & illustrated by Neil Waldman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2002

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Waldman (Too Young For Yiddish, p. 106, etc) begins by asking why of all the ancient cultures and religions of the Mediterranean only the Jews have survived. His answer is that the promise of the land, Eretz Yisrael, which God made to Abraham, has sustained the Jewish people through Diaspora and the many calamities they have suffered. Retelling the story of the Covenant, the sojourn in Egypt, and the Exodus is central to Jewish observance. Waldman relates these stories and emphasizes their role in keeping the Jewish religion alive. While there are additional reasons for the long-term survival of the Jews, prohibitions against intermarriage, for example, this focuses on the role of place in Jewish belief. For the most part, it is a straightforward account that sticks to Biblical sources, except when the author allows himself artistic license for statements like “Moses smiled deeply” when he gazed for the first time across the Jordan valley to the Promised Land. Waldman employs his characteristically muted palette of browns and golds to depict the Israelites. Heavy on text and not likely to appeal to a younger crowd. (Picture book. 11+)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002

ISBN: 1-56397-332-4

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Boyds Mills

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S RELIGION

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THE WIND THAT WANTED TO REST
by Sheldon Oberman & illustrated by Neil Waldman

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A LAND OF BIG DREAMERS
by Neil Waldman & illustrated by Neil Waldman

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VOYAGES
by Neil Waldman & illustrated by Neil Waldman

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TORN THREAD

by Ann Isaacs ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2000

Holocaust. (Fiction 10-14)

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In 1943, motherless 12-year-old Eva, her sickly older sister Rachel, and their Papa are forced by the Germans, who have

occupied their Polish town, Bezdin, to live in the Jewish ghetto. Papa knows their lives are in danger and worries what will happen to his girls if he is killed or sent to a death camp. Then one day, as Rachel is walking to their aunt’s apartment for a visit, the soldiers raid the ghetto and carry her off. Weeks pass, and Papa finally hears that she is alive in a labor camp in Czechoslovakia. Since conditions in the ghetto worsen daily and the raids increase in frequency, Papa begs the Nazi official for whom he works to send Eva to join Rachel in Parschnitz; miraculously, his request is granted. At the camp, conditions are terrible—there is little water and practically no food, and the inmates are forced to work 18 hours a day at jobs that are not only difficult but extremely dangerous. Eva, for example, works on spinning machines, where she must keep lint from clogging the machinery by reaching into the moving mechanism. The girls grow weaker by the day, and their worries are compounded by two things: their uncertainty about the fate of Papa the ever-present chance that they will be chosen to board the trains that leave each day for the death camps. While the book is fiction, the author has based it on the life of her own mother-in-law, who survived in the camps even as her sister did. Every word of this radical change for Isaacs (Swamp Angel, 1994, etc.) rings as true as any first-person story told by an actual survivor, giving young readers another powerful testament to the horrors of the

Holocaust. (Fiction 10-14)