The unimaginable is made alive, heart-wrenching, and reachable for modern young readers.
It is Berlin in 1941, and the Nazis have further escalated their search for Jews to deport to the concentration camps.
Lillian Frey and her father, who is blind, run through the night to a promised safe place at Otto Weidt’s factory, which is contracted to supply brushes to the army. His employees are blind Jews. Weidt is not Jewish, but he too is blind and at risk of deportation or murder by the Nazis for this disability. The factory contains a secret room where the workers, who have developed close friendships, can hide in an emergency. Weidt arranges for safe housing, where Lillian and her father are fed and well cared for by their kind landlady. But their safety remains precarious at best, for the Gestapo is always watching. When the workers are brought to the trains for deportation, all seems lost. Weidt uses every possible means to rescue them, threatening to report the Gestapo agents for endangering the army and providing bribes to secure their release. Kacer creates the fictional Freys and has12-year-old Lillian narrate the events in a voice that is true, strong, and wise beyond her years. In a detailed afterword the author presents the biographies, backgrounds, and outcomes of Weidt and several of the real workers. Otto Weidt’s compassion, strength, and bravery have led to his recognition as Righteous Among Nations at Yad Vashem, and with this novel, Kacer brings him to life for children.
The unimaginable is made alive, heart-wrenching, and reachable for modern young readers. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77260-138-1
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
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 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
PROFILES
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable.
Six New Jersey 12-year-olds separated by decades race to ensure the “good guys” win World War II in this middle-grade work by the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and her brother, a children's author and journalist.
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlled dystopia of Westfallen? This propulsive thriller includes well-paced cuts between times that keep the pages turning. Like most people in their small New Jersey town, Alice, Artie, and Frances are white. In 1944, Lawrence, who’s Black, endures bigotry; in the U.S.A. of 2023, Henry’s biracial (white and Black) identity and Lukas’ Jewish one are unremarkable, but in Westfallen, Henry’s a “mischling” doing “work-learning,” and Lukas is a menial laborer. Alice’s and Henry’s dual first-person narration zooms in on the adventure, but readers who pull back may find themselves deeply uneasy with the summary consideration paid to the real-life fates of European Jews and disabled people. The cliffhanger ending will have them hoping for more thoughtful treatment in sequels to come.
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable. (Science fiction/thriller. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781665950817
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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