Book Review: Is It Night or Day? by Fern Schumer Chapman (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010)

Recommended for ages 10 and up.

With the benefit of hindsight, we know that 12-year old German Jew Edith Westerfeld, whose parents put her on a ship to America in 1938, was one of the lucky ones. But as she watched her beloved family get smaller and smaller on shore as the ship pulled away, she didn't feel lucky at all.

Like so many families in Germany, the Westerfelds of Stockstadt thought of themselves much more as German than Jewish. After all, they had lived in their community for over 200 years and Edith's father, a war veteran, was a respected civic leader. Not until Edith's 12th birthday party in 1937, when none of the invited guests dared to show up at a Jew's house, did Edith realize how everything had changed. Her older sister, Betty, had already been sent to America the year before; however, her grandmother refused to leave her home in Germany and Edith's father wouldn't leave Oma Sarah behind. But as the situation in Germany deteriorates for the Jews, her family sends her off to live with an aunt and uncle in Chicago, telling her that she must do what she can to raise money for their passage, arrange for work for them, and find someone to sponsor them--a daunting task for a young girl who couldn't even speak English.

When Edith arrives in Chicago, her uncle tries to be kind to her, but it is clear that her aunt and teenaged cousin see her as a burden, and (almost in Cinderella-mode), as someone to wax the floor and carry the groceries from the store. School's not easy either; Edith is put in first grade, where she can't even fit into the tiny desks. The kids at school mockingly call her "Goldilocks."

As she improves her English by reading the newspaper, Edith becomes a fan of the comics and the sports section, and soon shares her uncle's love of baseball, particularly admiring Jewish baseball superstar Hank Greenberg. She and her uncle begin a German Immigration Fund jar, adding her small earnings from delivering water. But when she and her uncle see the newsreels of Kristallnacht, her uncle sponsors a raffle to raise money to get her family out of Germany. Finally, a letter arrives from her mother, addressed to her uncle--her father has been sent to a labor camp. Her mother has desperately written to relatives all over the world--"but so far, nothing." When the U.S. enters the war, Edith has to register as an enemy alien, but what will happen to her beloved Mutti and Vati (mother and father) and to the servicemen stationed overseas, whose families mark their absence with flags with blue and gold stars?

This novel is based on the true story of Chapman's own mother, Edith Westerfeld. Although the book will resonate particularly with Jewish readers, the story of immigration and what it is like to be a refugee in a strange land is a universal one for Americans, and one that will appeal to readers in middle school on up.

Click here to read a short excerpt from the book.

Is It Night Or Day? has been recognized by the American Library Association on its Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA) list and was also named on Booklist's Top 10 Historical Fiction list.

Edith was one of 1,200 children sponsored by an American rescue organization composed of Lutherans, Quakers, and Jews that took place from 1934 to 1945. Approximately a dozen children from one to sixteen years were brought in monthly through this program, a pitiful figure compared with what the United States could have done during that period.

Although young Edith was admitted through this program, the United States' record on admitting Jewish refugees during this period is shameful. While 1,200 children may sound like a lot to some of the novel's readers, this represents a tiny number compared to the number of refugees desperately seeking asylum in the United States and elsewhere. Although not mentioned in the author's Afterword, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied diligently for the Child Refugee Bill, which would have allowed 10,000 Jewish children a year for two years to enter the United States above the usual German quota, but Congress refused to pass the bill, despite the fact that families had already been found to take in the children. I would have liked to see the author mention in her afterword how little was actually done by the U.S. regarding the refugees, including perhaps a brief discussion of the Evian Conference in 1938 (the year Edith leaves Germany). During that nine-day meeting, convened by the United States to discuss the Jewish refugee question, delegates offered sympathy for the Jews, but only one country, the Dominican Republic, offered to grant large numbers of Jews sanctuary. In fact, the conference was ultimately a victory for Nazi propaganda; "Nobody wants them," claimed the German newspaper Völkischer Beobachter after the Evian Conference.

Book Review: The Year of Goodbyes by Debbie Levy (Disney-Hyperion Books, 2010)

Recommended for ages 10 and up

While there are many novels and non-fiction books about the Holocaust aimed at young readers, with more appearing every year, Debbie Levy's unique little volume deserves a place on school and public library shelves. Levy's mother, Jutta Salzberg, and her immediate family were among the fortunate few--they left Germany in 1938 for America, barely escaping arrest and probable death at the hands of the Nazis.

One of the few cherished items Jutta was able to bring with her was her posiealbum, or poetry album, a kind of scrapbook popular with young girls in Germany in the 1930's. As Levy explains in the introduction, posiealbums were blank books in which young people "collected poems, drawings, and expressions of good wishes from friends and family." Levy intersperses reproductions of actual pages from the posiealbum, along with English translations, with free verse poetry written in her mother's voice. These poems link the entries together and narrate the tale of the family's experiences in 1938, their last year in their homeland, poignantly described in the title as the year of goodbyes.

Through Jutta's reflections and those of her friends and family in the posiealbum, we see life go from bad to worse for this typical 12-year-old girl and her family. As persecution of the Jews worsened, Jutta's father obtains permission from the Nazis to leave Germany, but will he be able to get visas for them to emigrate to the United States? He becomes increasingly desperate, even threatening to jump out the window of the American Consultate in Hamburg. When the visas are finally obtained, we see the family's preparations to leave Germany, as they are forced to leave nearly all their possessions and money behind. None of their friends and family could imagine what was in store, however, for those who remained behind. Levy has carefully researched the fate of all those friends and relatives who inscribed their best wishes in Jutta's album; in an afterword, she reveals what happened to each. As the reader can easily imagine, many of them later perished in the camps. The afterword also provides a context for the year described in this book, so that young people without much knowledge of the period can understand the developments which surrounded Jutta's family and friends. In addition, Levy provides a helpful note on how she did her research on those who had written in Jutta's album and a selected bibliography for further exploration of issues surrounding the Holocaust.

While the reader would imagine that Jutta, having safely escaped Nazi Germany, never saw any of her classmates again, there is an astonishing footnote to this story. When Levy wrote an article published in the Washington Postin 1998 about her mother's escape from Nazi Germany, the article was seen by several of Jutta's former classmates that were now living in the U.S. In 2000, seven of the "girls" from Jutta's Hamburg school held at reunion in Washington, D.C., bringing their posiealbums with them. One can only imagine their joy and also their sorrow for those classmates who did not survive the Holocaust.

Through a blog, Levy has begun a posiealbum project through which readers can continue the posiealbum tradition by posting their thoughts and feelings on an on-line album. Viewers can also see some of the original pages from Jutta Salzberg's poesiealbum, reproduced in full color rather than black and white as in the book--plus an image of the poesiealbum itself.

Book Review: Warriors in the Crossfire by Nancy Bo Flood (Front Street, 2010)

Recommended for ages 12 and up

I've read lots of novels that are set during World War II, but many more that take place in Europe than the Pacific. This slender but well-written new book by Nancy Bo Flood concentrates on a small piece of the war in the Pacific, a battle that took place on the island of Saipan, part of the Mariana Islands located about 1,300 miles from Japan, in the final months of the war. This island was considered to be of great strategic importance by both the Japanese and the American forces. The Americans expected to use the island as an air force base in order to launch an invasion of Japan, which had occupied the island since the 1930's. Saipan was one of the bloodiest battles of the war, with more than 30,000 Japanese and American soldiers killed. But what about the native population of the island?

This story is told through young Joseph, whose father is the village chief, and his cousin Kento, who is half-Japanese. As the battle over Saipan approaches, the Japanese issue more and more restrictions on the native population, and close down the school, where Joseph is the only native student. We see the tension between Joseph and the Japanese youth, a situation that threatens to explode at a celebration where the natives are asked to perform their traditional dances for the Japanese elite. With the situation increasingly tense, the men of the village spend more and more time talking and arguing. One night, his father wakes him up when it's still dark, and makes Joseph follow him over a rough trail to a hidden cave which has served in the past to hide people in times of war. His father tells the young boy: "Remember the turtle, Joseph. When the shark smells blood, he attacks. The turtle pulls in his head, waits...survives. Joseph, survive. Bring our family here." His father warns him that when the battle comes, he must trust no one, not even his half-Japanese cousin Bento. His father has prepared the cave with stores of food and water. Joseph's sensei (teacher), too, tries to warn his former student that the Americans will invade and that he should go far away from the shoreline. He gives him a book of poetry by the celebrated poet Basho as a keepsake.

When the battle begins, both Joseph and Bento, too young to be soldiers, must help their families survive, becoming warriors in the process.

Depicted in this novel is one of the most tragic episodes of the war in the Pacific; when the Japanese realized the battle was lost, they marched all their citizens, including the elderly and children, to the bluffs of "Suicide Cliff," a bluff that plummets more than 800 feet to the sea. Flood explains, "Families lined up, youngest to oldest, walking backwards until they stepped, or were pushed, over the cliff's edge. From helicopters, American soldiers dropped leaflets and broadcast messages urging people not to jump but to surrender. These reassurances had little effect; hundreds leapt to their deaths." Those civilians, native and Japanese, who survived the battle were forced into refugee camps where they lived until the war ended in July, 1946.

This novel is told in short, sparsely written chapters, which begin with a short free verse poem related to the content of the chapter and a title in kanji (Japanese script) as well as in English.

Readers interested in learning more about the Battle of Saipan can see a virtual exhibit from the American Memorial Park in Saipan which includes many actual photographs taken during or after the battle as well as links to testimonies from native survivors.

Discussion questions for teachers are available on Nancy Bo Flood's website.

I highly recommend this book for school or public libraries.

Book Review: Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell (Bloomsbury, 2010)

Recommended for ages 10 and up.
Eighth-grader Genevieve just wants to have a regular summer with her friends, going to the rec-center pool, to soccer camp, and hanging out and talking about cute boys. But when her mother gets the idea that the whole family should go to Camp Frontier, a "resort" in Wyoming where campers pay lots of money to faithfully re-enact the 1890's pioneer experience, Genevieve is far from thrilled. It's not just living without her I-pod, computer and lip gloss that gets her down...she also has to use an incredibly stinky outhouse, deal with killer mosquitos and attacking chickens, and horror of horrors--share a bed with her younger brother!

Her mother promises reluctant Genevieve her own cell phone at the end of the summer if she'll just cooperate for a few months with their little adventure. Little does her mother suspect that Genevieve has secretly hidden the cell phone and is using it to text her friends back home with laugh-out-loud updates on her pioneer experiences. Here's an example:

"Week 1 - Sunday. 2:27 pm. Help! I'm dressed up like an American Girl Doll minus the fashion sense. My sleeves are so tight I can't lift my arms above my head. Is this the new me?"

But when Genevieve meets the handsome Caleb, teenaged son of one of the other families at Camp Frontier, she wonders if the summer might be salvageable after all. Or is he already hooking up with Nora, the daughter of the couple who own the camp? And just when life at the camp seems to be getting more bearable (and Gen discovers she's actually good at milking their cow!)--her contraband cell phone is discovered. Will her family be voted off of Camp Frontier?

In her acknowledgments, author Cathleen Davitt Bell acknowledges her debt to the PBS series Frontier House, in which three modern families were sent to Montana to experience life in 1883. She also was clearly inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic Little House series. Bell writes that she was eight years old when she opened Little House for the first time--"and by my tenth birthday I was knitting blankets, sewing doll clothes, baking my own bread, and making architectural sketches of a camp that would transport visitors to the frontier. Thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder, for providing me with years of magic."

In addition to lacing the book with plenty of humor, Bell also demonstrates in her book some of the real rigors of frontier life, where ordinary chores like laundry took an entire day, there was no sun block or screen doors to protect from mosquitos, and bears might roam the woods! While the book does not include a formal bibliography, Bell does mention some of the sources she found most useful in researching pioneer life, particularly for women, in this time period.

This book is likely to be very popular with tween and teen girls, especially those who are or were fans of the still very popular Little House books, or who have enjoyed reruns of the TV series. For extra fun, the author has set up an actual blog that replicates the blog which plays such a key role in the story.

Book Review: Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick (Roaring Brook Press, 2010)

Recommended for ages 12 and up

Originally published in London in 2009, Revolver combines two of my favorite genres: historical fiction and adventure/survival stories. Sedgwick is the author of ten previous novels for young people, most of which include gothic or paranormal elements. This psychological mystery/survival story, however, set in the forbidding world of the Arctic Circle, does not need any hints of vampires, ghosts, or witches to cast a spell on its readers. Once begun, the reader will have a hard time putting this book down.

The story alternates between Giron, an iron mining town, in 1910, and Nome in 1899, at the time of the Alaskan Gold Rush. What happened in Nome that has made 14-year old Sig's father be on the run for so many years? When Sig's father dies after a fall through the frigid ice, Sig and his sister are visited by an evil man, Gunther Wolff, who claims that he is owed half of their father's gold. They know nothing of any gold, and are terrified that this giant of a man will kill them both. An ancient Colt revolver--and ammunition--is hidden in the back of their cabin. Can Sig's resourcefulness--and the Colt revolver--possibly rescue them from this threat?

The author goes back and forth between Sig's terrifying encounter with this man whom he cannot remember and the time years before when the family lived in Nome. Sedgwick writes of Einar, the father: "He'd come for the gold, and he hadn't meant to stay. These things never lasted long, Einar knew." But when Einar is offered a job as an Assay Clerk, the government official who "does the testing and the weighing and the paying," the family settles into this harsh environment. That is, until tragedy strikes, after the arrival in Nome of the villainous miner Wolff.

There are several scenes in this book that suggest rape and murder; even though not described in graphic detail, these scenes make this book appropriate for a young adult audience but not recommended for younger children.

In the U.K. , Revolver has been short-listed for a number of prestigious prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, the Independent Booksellers Award, the UK Literacy Association Award, and the Northern Ireland Book Award, The book was also nominated for the Guardian Children's Book Prize.

This is the kind of fast-moving adventure story that would make a good recommendation for reluctant readers, particularly boys. You can read the book's first three chapters on-line using the widget below.

Book Review: Once by Morris Gleitzman (Henry Holt and Company, 2010, originally published in Australia by Penguin in 2005)

Recommended for ages 12 and up

I have to say I was more than surprised when I picked up this slim volume by Morris Gleitzman. Wait a minute, I said to myself, isn't he the wacky Australian author who writes those wickedly funny books about cane toads? Not the first author one would think of to write a book on one of the most tragic events in human history. Then I remembered The Entertainer and the Dybbuk, written by the very funny Sid Fleischman, and I knew that reading Once was a must for me.

I must start by saying there are no toads in this story, but Gleitzman does manage to make the book both comic and tragic at the same time, no mean feat for any writer tackling this difficult subject matter. The story is narrated by Felix, a young boy who has lived hidden for the past 3 1/2 years at a Catholic orphanage in Poland not far from the village where his parents had a bookstore.

The book starts:

"Once I was living in an orphanage in the mountains and I shouldn't have been and I almost caused a riot. It was because of the carrot."

Felix believes that the incredible fact that his thin bowl of soup contains a whole carrot just for him is a secret sign that his parents are about to come to take him home. Instead of his parents, however, a "bunch of men in suits with armbands" arrive, and soon there's a bonfire in the orphanage courtyard. What is burning? Felix convinces himself that Mother Minka, the head of the orphanage, must have "called in profesional librarians in professional librarian armbands. They've reorganized the library, and now they're burning the books that are left over."

Felix decides he must try to find his parents and tell them that the Nazis are burning Jewish books. But first he decides to return to his village and hide the books from the store. Despite the fact that one of the other children tries to tell him that the Nazis are dangerous and that he shouldn't leave the safety of the orphanage, Felix responds, "I know what they're doing. They're burning books." Until he leaves the orphanage, he has no understanding at all as to what is happening in his homeland. The naivete of Felix resembles Bruno, the German boy in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as well as the main character in Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed. On his journey back to his village, Felix hears gunshots and thinks people are out hunting. The reader knows the sound is probably Nazis shooting Jews.

When Felix arrives at his village, he discovers that not only has another family moved into his parents' store and house, but all the books are gone as well. When a sympathetic Polish neighbor finds him, he tells Felix that all the Jews are gone, relocated to the city, and gives Felix some food and water. As Felix continues his journey, he encounters a burning house, where he rescues a little girl whose parents have been murdered and who has been left for dead. Gleitzman manages to mix some humor into this otherwise horrific scenario. Zelda, the rescued girl, is a spunky child, who alternates between asking for Felix to tell her stories and scolding him with her favorite refrain, "Don't you know anything?" But when Felix and Zelda encounter a road crowded with Jews walking to the city--men, women, children, and old people--wearing armbands with Jewish stars, which he assumes are so they can recognize other members of their group, the awful truth of the situation begins to slowly dawn on him. "Maybe it's not just our books the Nazis hate. Maybe it's us."

Felix and Zelda finally arrive at the city, but as the reader suspects, his parents are nowhere to be found. When a Nazi soldier tries to separate him from Zelda, a Jewish man intervenes, and takes the children away. This character, a dentist in this novel, is inspired by Janusz Korczak, the Polish doctor and author who ran an orphanage for Jewish children, and chose to die with them in the camps rather than abandon them.

Despite Felix's tragic circumstances, the reader can't help but laugh at comic elements of the story such as his encounter with a farmyard pig, who he hopes can give him directions. Or when Barney, the dentist, takes Felix with him when he goes to treat the toothache of a Nazi officer, to entertain the officer with stories so he won't notice the pain. Felix tells the officer a story about Nazi soldiers in a remote African village. "I make up the most exciting and thrilling story I can, with lots of vicious wild animals and poisonous insects who say nice things about Adolf Hitler...the Nazi officer was smiling by the time I was half-way through the story. By the time I'd described how the two German soldiers turned the windmill into a giant water pump and built a lake for the African kids to go ice-skating on, he was laughing. He made me carry on with the story even after Barney finished drilling."

From the very beginning of the book we see that Felix is a boy who lives through the power of stories. In fact, he carries around a notebook given to him by his parents in which he writes down the wild stories of his imagination. In the end, however, stories alone cannot save him and the other children in the ghetto from the Nazis. While packed into a cattle car for deportation to the death camps, Felix realizes that his story notebook has a more practical value; as toilet paper in the "toilet corner" of the train car. At the end of the book, this "toilet paper" leads to a discovery that allows Felix and Zelda to make a daring escape from the moving train car. Their adventures are continued in the novel Then, unfortunately not yet available for the U.S. market. The third book in the trilogy, Now, was just released in May 2010 in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.

Gleitzman provides a short afterword in which he explains that although the story is fiction, that it was inspired by real events. His grandfather, like mine, was a Polish Jew who left well before the Holocaust, but whose extended family were murdered by the Nazis. Although the story of Felix is fictional, Gleitzman did extensive research on young people during the Holocaust, and provides some links to further information on his website. There is also a discussion guide for teachers and/or parents on the Henry Holt site.

This is an outstanding addition to the books on the Holocaust aimed at young readers. It's a must for school and public libraries.

48 hour book challenge!

I've never been an athlete--I'm just under 5'0 tall, and sports ability doesn't exactly run in my family, so when I saw Mother Reader's 48 hour Book Challenge, I said to myself, "finally, a sport where I can be competitive--reading!!!"

I started at 8:30 this morning, and have continued reading while waiting with my son for his camp physical, and next will be posting on my first finished book. I went to our wonderful local children's library here in Claremont, The Stone Center for Children's Books (which is affiliated with Claremont Graduate School), and got a pile of books, some of which were on my mental "to-read" list and some that were new to me, so I'm off and running!