A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love.
In 1905, a family fleeing pogroms comes to rural North Dakota.
Shoshana loves Liubashevka, her village in what’s now Ukraine, though she misses her barely remembered father and older brother, off in “Nordakota.” Liubashevka is getting dangerous for Jews, though: Cossacks gave Mama a head injury, and if Papa and 17-year-old Anshel were here, they’d be conscripted into the tsar’s army. So they journey to America, Shoshana sneakily acquiring a kitten en route. With Shoshana, older sister Libke, and the 3-year-old twins, Papa’s prairie dugout is crowded, but it’s good to have the family together again. Still, Shoshana feels the constant pressure of being different: Her Yiddish-speaking family isn’t allowed credit at the general store, and the bullying boys at the one-room schoolhouse call her hateful slurs. Wouldn’t it just be easier to celebrate Christmas? Wouldn’t the boys be nice if she just wasn’t Jewish anymore? Frequent parallels to the Little House series accentuate how different Shoshana’s experience is from the White, Christian, mythically American lives of her classmates. A friendly interaction with a Dakota girl allows Shoshana to feel anger for the displaced Dakota (though she doesn’t ponder the relationship between that displacement and her own family’s safe refuge). A moving, gently kind coming-to-America story.
A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love. (author’s note, references) (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781454947844
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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