An accessible, well-paced story about courageous young people resisting the Nazis.
In the months before Kristallnacht, a German teen, hating the Hitler Youth, finds a youth club of freedom fighters.
Paul, a White, Christian 15-year-old in 1938 Düsseldorf, wishes pretty Analia still went to his school. They’ve shared one kiss, and she’s been his friend for years—but Analia, like other Jews, is no longer allowed to attend classes. Paul still has his best friend, but Harold is increasingly obsessed with the Hitler Youth; Paul loathes Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and antisemitism, but what can he do? He still joins the Hitler Youth, because in a world where his own classmates inform on their parents to the Gestapo, is there any other way to be safe? But is Paul imagining things, or did he hear some brave—or reckless?—kids singing anti-Hitler songs? In fact Paul has discovered the Edelweiss Pirates, a real-life group of teens who met illegally across Hitler’s Germany to resist Nazism. Paul joins them, running increasingly risky schemes to cause petty annoyances for the Nazis, until he sees Analia on Kristallnacht, a series of concerted attacks on synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses. This leads to a climactic moment in their relationship. Although the real Pirates were predominately working class, Paul is the child of two doctors. Though the historical danger and torment are muted, this is a tense, exciting adventure about vital resistance.
An accessible, well-paced story about courageous young people resisting the Nazis. (historical note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77260-205-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Nineteenth-century tomboy Louisa Cosgrove wants to study medicine, but after her indulgent father's death, that dream seems impossibly distant. Her mother dispatches her to family friends, but Louisa never arrives. Instead, she is taken to Wildthorn Hall, an insane asylum. The staff insist her name is Lucy Childs, and her treatment ranges from the relatively benign (tranquilizers) to the horrific (sensory deprivation). The mystery of Louisa's incarceration is revealed through alternating chapters of her present and childhood: Like many of her fellow "patients," Louisa's been committed for being a troublesome woman. Luckily, her family doesn't know of those tendencies that would make her utterly irredeemable—her overly fond feelings for her beautiful cousin Grace. Unlike many of the other inmates, who seem to develop mental illness from the cruelty of their surroundings, Louisa is determined to escape, perhaps with the help of a lovely asylum employee, Eliza. Despite a too-pat ending, Louisa and Eliza provide a window into a shameful history of mental health care and women's incarceration that only ended in living memory. (Historical fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-37017-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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