A sentimental and affecting story about a connection between children of different cultures.
Psychotherapist Cohn presents an illustrated children’s book, based on real events, about the impact of the war in Ukraine on children.
The author presents a tale of two children’s experiences during the Ukraine conflict. First, readers meet Artem, a Ukrainian boy who flees with his mother to Poland for safety while his father stays behind to fight. Artem and his mother arrive in Przemysl and are soon transported to the Welcoming Center, a shopping-mall-turned-refugee-shelter. There, the boy befriends Paolo, a World Central kitchen volunteer who comforts him with familiar foods, such as potato pancakes, dumplings, and cabbage rolls. Meanwhile, in the United States, a young American girl named Hannah learns about the war and feels concern for Ukrainian children. She decides to raise money for World Central Kitchen by selling potato pancakes, inspired by the Ukrainian dish deruny and the latkes that Hannah ate at her friend Merrill’s Hannukah celebration. Hannah and Merrill make treats dubbed “freedom pancakes” and put them in plastic bags tied with yellow and blue ribbons. The next day, the friends set up a stand on Hannah’s front lawn and sell the pancakes to neighbors, classmates, and church friends, raising “a great deal of money.” Meanwhile, Paolo shares special fruit pouches with Artem, who, in turn, shares one with a new arrival at the Welcoming Center before heading off with his mother to live with a Polish family. Cohn’s story explores community and empathy in a story that offers a heartwarming and gentle way to discuss the war in Ukraine with children. However, some passages may be difficult for some youngsters to understand without more context, as when Hannah thinks about how Hannukah “tells the story of the Maccabees—Jewish freedom fighters—who were victorious in liberating the Jewish people from their Syrian rulers.” Also, some adults may find that the narrative frames a complex humanitarian crisis in somewhat simplistic terms. Ukrainian artist Holubiatnikova’s watercolors evoke the Ukrainians’ intense emotions during trying times and reflect her own firsthand experience working in a war zone.
A sentimental and affecting story about a connection between children of different cultures.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798989163571
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Le Chambon Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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