Moving examples of the power of culture and folklore to offer help, hope, and inspiration to act.
Answering a call to witness, Shusterman offers five original tales of Jews resisting and escaping Nazis with help from miracles, wonders, and legends.
Inspired by actual examples of aid and rescue recounted in brief between each story, the author celebrates courage in the face of brutality and terror—beginning with a group of orphaned children in Hamburg narrowly escaping a Nazi roundup through a window in their apartment that becomes a portal to a peaceful world. There are also striking tales of a golem at Auschwitz, resistance fighters freeing a train of captives with help from Baba Yaga and the people of Chelm, and a teenager who wields the staff of Moses to raise a bridge of sunken boats, helping Danish Jews escape across the Øresund strait to Sweden. In a pointed final story, an American child passes back and forth between this time and an alternate present in which the Holocaust never happened, but antisemitic violence is ominously on the rise. Noting the influence of Marvel Comics on his work, Martínez offers clean-lined period scenes of ordinary-looking heroes enduring fear and hardship, and “fighting for justice on every page.” Resonating with an earlier acknowledgment that Roma and other minorities also suffered Nazi persecution, Martínez finds common personal ground in his own Tejano family’s experiences with white supremacists.
Moving examples of the power of culture and folklore to offer help, hope, and inspiration to act. (photo credits, author’s notes, illustrator’s note, bibliography, note on Hebrew letters) (Graphic fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780545313483
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
PROFILES
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions.
A teenage girl refuses a medical procedure to remove her heart and her emotions.
June lives in a future in which a reclusive Scientist has pioneered a procedure to remove hearts, thus eliminating all “sadness, anxiety, and anger.” The downside is that it numbs pleasurable feelings, too. Most people around June have had the procedure done; for young people, in part because doing so helps them become more focused and successful. Before long, June is the only one among her peers who still has her heart. When her parents decide it’s time for her to have the procedure so she can become more focused in school, June hatches a plan to pretend to go through with it. She also investigates a way to restore her beloved sister’s heart, joining forces with Max, a classmate who’s also researching the Scientist because he has started to feel again despite having had his heart removed. The pair’s journey is somewhat rushed and improbable, as is the resolution they achieve. However, the story’s message feels relevant and relatable to teens, and the artwork effectively sets the scene, with bursts of color popping throughout an otherwise black-and-white landscape, reflecting the monochromatic, heartless reality of June’s world. There are no ethnic or cultural markers in the text; June has paper-white skin and dark hair, and Max has dark skin and curly black hair.
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions. (Graphic speculative fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780063116214
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
An enticing, turbulent, and satisfying final voyage.
Adrian, the youngest of the Montague siblings, sails into tumultuous waters in search of answers about himself, the sudden death of his mother, and her mysterious, cracked spyglass.
On the summer solstice less than a year ago, Caroline Montague fell off a cliff in Aberdeen into the sea. When the Scottish hostel where she was staying sends a box of her left-behind belongings to London, Adrian—an anxious, White nobleman on the cusp of joining Parliament—discovers one of his mother’s most treasured possessions, an antique spyglass. She acquired it when she was the sole survivor of a shipwreck many years earlier. His mother always carried that spyglass with her, but on the day of her death, she had left it behind in her room. Although he never knew its full significance, Adrian is haunted by new questions and is certain the spyglass will lead him to the truth. Once again, Lee crafts an absorbing adventure with dangerous stakes, dynamic character growth, sharp social and political commentary, and a storm of emotion. Inseparable from his external search for answers about his mother, Adrian seeks a solution for himself, an end to his struggle with mental illness—a journey handled with hopeful, gentle honesty that validates the experiences of both good and bad days. Characters from the first two books play significant secondary roles, and the resolution ties up their loose ends. Humorous antics provide a well-measured balance with the heavier themes.
An enticing, turbulent, and satisfying final voyage. (Historical fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-291601-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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