This brief novel is appropriate for children (as long as they are as precocious as Katie) as well as young adults and older...
The story of a precocious 6-year-old, Katie, whose Christmas wish list is not for toys and gifts for herself, but rather for good things to happen to people she cares about.
She also wishes for a newer, fresher Nativity scene to replace the cracking, peeling plastic figures outside the town library since, as she explains to the adults who question her, the Nativity scene is very important. As the story unfolds, the sad librarian who once dated and loved Katie’s older brother, only to be rejected by him when he decided he must marry within his Amish faith, finally finds true love and is able to forgive the man who broke her heart. After a bit of a scare, the wife of another of Katie’s older brothers delivers a healthy, happy baby that the couple decides to name in honor of Katie. The dilapidated Nativity figures begin to disappear somewhat mysteriously, but in the end, the whole town comes together in a live reenactment of the important Nativity scene just as Katie imagined and hoped that they would. The author was a schoolteacher before she started to write best-selling fiction, which probably explains why the character of Katie, while unusually precocious, comes across as credible. The adult characters are also believable and likable.
This brief novel is appropriate for children (as long as they are as precocious as Katie) as well as young adults and older adults intrigued by the often surprising wisdom and insight of young children.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-224254-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Avon Inspire/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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