A bit of a slog for the target audience.
A story highlighting elements of Denmark’s role in the Second World War, with an inspiring young hero at its center.
Denmark is one of the few countries with a World War II record to be proud of—according to the book, 7,742 of the country’s 8,250 Jews survived with the brave assistance of non-Jewish citizens—so Hood’s choice to focus on the rare uplifting story from this period is a sound one. Twenty-two-year-old Henny Sinding, the daughter of a naval officer, helped smuggle hundreds of Jews to safety in Sweden on the Gerda III, a boat that was originally used to maintain buoys and lighthouses. Hood tells us that “people later compared Henny to / Pippi Longstocking, / the playful, / unconventional, / compassionate, / ‘strongest girl in the world,’ ” and also that “like the Little Mermaid, / Henny discovered / that being human can be painful.” But these intriguing insights are not centered, rather smothered by hundreds of pages that slowly unfold, tracing the Danish role in the war and sometimes reading like children’s encyclopedia entries with line breaks. And if the line breaks are intended to help reluctant readers by putting fewer words on each page, the vocabulary and sentence construction used often work against accessibility and comprehension. The book is very long, and it is neither lively nor lyrical.
A bit of a slog for the target audience. (author’s note, who’s who, map, historical notes, photographs, poetry notes, sources, bibliography) (Verse nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-321448-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Deftly written and informative; a call for vigilance and equality.
An examination of the history of Chinese American experiences.
Blackburn opens with a note to readers about growing up feeling invisible as a multicultural, biracial Chinese American. She notes the tremendous diversity of Chinese American history and writes that this book is a starting point for learning more. The evenly paced narrative starts with the earliest recorded arrival of the Chinese in America in 1834. A teenage girl, whose real name is unknown, arrived in New York Harbor with the Carnes brothers, merchants who imported Chinese goods and put her on display “like an animal in a circus.” The author then examines shifting laws, U.S. and global political and economic climates, and changing societal attitudes. The book introduces the highlighted people—including Yee Ah Tye, Wong Kim Ark, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, and Vincent Chen—in relation to lawsuits or other transformative events; they also stand as examples for explaining concepts such as racial hierarchy and the model minority myth. Maps, photos, and documents are interspersed throughout. Chapters close with questions that encourage readers to think critically about systems of oppression, actively engage with the material, and draw connections to their own lives. Although the book covers a wide span of history, from the Gold Rush to the rise in anti-Asian hate during the Covid-19 pandemic, it thoroughly explains the various events. Blackburn doesn’t shy away from describing terrible setbacks, but she balances them with examples of solidarity and progress.
Deftly written and informative; a call for vigilance and equality. (resources, bibliography, image credits) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567630
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
An extraordinary tale of sisterhood and survival, told with simplicity.
A true story of two sisters—one Deaf and one hearing—and how they endured a perilous childhood in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.
Herta Myers, 8, and Renee, 10, are sisters living in Bratislava, the capital of what was then Czechoslovakia, during World War II. Renee is her family’s ears, as Herta and both of their parents are Deaf. They all communicate using sign language. Renee becomes so good at recognizing the sound of soldiers’ boots outside the window that she can warn her family of any danger. With narration traded between the girls, readers learn that the sisters are hidden on a farm with a couple who are also Deaf. Eventually, separated from their parents, the sisters’ journey leads them to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where their collective resolve is endlessly tested. This is a compelling story, exploring the role that senses play when one is in danger as well as presenting the candid recollections of everyday details of two children navigating appalling conditions during wartime. It is, however, a lot to process for kids who are as young as Herta and Renee were at the time of their most traumatic experiences. In the epilogue, co-author Greene reveals that this book is largely a compilation and interweaving of the transcripts of interviews that these two sisters gave to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.
An extraordinary tale of sisterhood and survival, told with simplicity. (poem, photographs) (Memoir. 10-14)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-75335-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
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