The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Call Across the Sea by Kathy Kacer Annick Press Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Sandy Wasserman Buy at Bookshop.org I was blown away by this book; I can’t say it any other way. While there’s the need for and interest in Holocaust books for children, so many teachers and parents are not comfortable with the negativity in so many of them, because of the fear of frightening children with graphic images of starvation and worse. This book, on the other hand, is totally positive in numerous ways! Uplifting! We meet the protagonist, a teen, a positive force! On the first page, we feel her love for Denmark, her understanding of her entire community including the Jewish people in it, her neighbors. We see her strength and character and desire to be part of a youth resistance movement when Hitler comes to power and the Nazis, the Gestapo, show up in growing numbers in Denmark. The reader is introduced into Henny’s school life, her entry into the Danish resistance, even the people wh

Bluebird by Sharon Cameron Scholastic Press Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org Sharon Cameron’s BLUEBIRD begins in August 1946 with Eva arriving in New York City from war-torn Berlin. Chapter Two begins in February 1945, where sixteen-year-old Inge steals her father’s car to go on a joy ride and giggles with her friend Annemarie about kissing her mother’s chauffeur, even though she’s all but engaged to Rolf, a friend of Papa’s. In America, Eva is on a mission—not the one the US government assigned to her—to mete out justice for the innocent. In Germany, Inge’s world falls apart with the Führer’s death and her discovery of the truth of her father’s work in his camp. These seemingly separate stories are soon braided together into one cohesive storyline.  An idea for a story often begin with the question, “What if?” What if a German girl, an active member in the League of German Girls, though she never seems to measure up to pure Nazi standards, discovers the

Last Witnesses (Adapted for Young Adults) by Svetlana Alexievich, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky Delacorte Press (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Young Adults Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an unofficial agreement in which the two countries agreed to stipulations of non-aggression against one another and to partition and divide Poland. Despite this agreement, German invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941. Last Witnesses (Adapted for Young Adults) presents an oral history of the children of the Great Patriotic War (what we in the West know as either Operation Barbarossa or the Eastern Front of WWII). Originally published for adults in Russian in 1985 as Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II , Penguin Random House has now made both adult and a young adult adaptation available in English.   Nobel Prize winning author Alexievich’s i

Boy from Buchenwald: The True Story of a Holocaust Survivor by Robbie Waisman with Susan McClelland Bloomsbury Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Sandy Wasserman Buy at Bookshop.org I never cease to be amazed at the sheer quality of details some Holocaust survivors share in their testimonies, as if they were able, using today’s slang, to create screenshots to then use at a later date. Robbie Waisman is a master at this. This book is part memoir, part ‘how to’ on the power of resilience.  In 1945, Robbie’s life was turned upside down. The baby in his happy family, at age 14 his life goes from bad to worse as Hitler invades Poland. The reader is carried away with Robbie on his journey, through his fears and panic. The reader doesn’t witness physical horrors, but emotional ones, as Robbie tells his story. But always, his resilience is strengthened, buoyed up, by small family memories and by remembered words and phrases his mother often told him about how to navigate life. This is the story

The Summer of Lost Letters by Hannah Reynolds Razorbill (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Cheryl Fox Strausberg Buy at Bookshop.org When Abigail Schoenberg receives a package of her grandmother Ruth’s personal effects, the last thing she expected to find was a bundle of love letters. However, the stranger part is that these letters were not signed by her grandfather, but instead by someone named Edward, of whom Abby’s family knows nothing. Abby and her family only know that her grandmother immigrated to the United States at the age of four in 1939. So, who is this mysterious Edward?    After reading through the letters and doing a bit of online research, Abby discovers that her grandmother was part of an American Kindertransport program. She was brought to the U.S. and essentially adopted by a wealthy Jewish family who summered on Nantucket Island. After discovering that Edward is still alive, Abby attempts and fails to arrange to speak

 The Good War by Todd Strasser Delacorte Press (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org In 1981, Todd Strasser wrote The Wave , based on the true story of high school history teacher Ben Ross and the class experiment he carried out in 1969. By creating a stringent behavioral “system” in his classroom, Ross showed his students how easily people could be swept up in a movement like Nazism. Now, forty years later, Strasser has written an updated, middle school version of The Wave titled The Good War. Instead of a high school history class, The Good War takes place in the newly formed eSports club of a middle school. The students in the club represent a wide swath of middle school types: the goody-goody, the high achiever, the hulking athlete, the “weird” loner, the bully, the mean girls, and so on. The kids come together after school to play a video game called The Good War , a World War II simulation game that pits the Alli

 The Shelter and the Fence: When 982 Holocaust Refugees Found Safe Haven in America by Norman H. Finkelstein Chicago Review Press Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Dena Bach Buy at Bookshop.org The Shelter and the Fence , a non-fiction narrative by Norman H. Finkelstein, a retired librarian, history teacher and winner of two National Jewish Book awards, richly recounts the true story of the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, NY. During World War II, the fear and distrust of refugees by most Americans almost entirely eliminated immigration. In stark contrast was Fort Ontario, the sole site in the United States that welcomed Jews escaping war-ravaged Europe.    Finkelstein begins his well-researched, readable account by describing the journeys taken by many of these 982 refugees to get to Oswego. He continues with an account of the working community they built behind the barbed wire fence of the fort. Included are names, detailed stories, and archival photos of s

 I Am Defiance: A Novel of WWII by Jenni L. Walsh Scholastic Press Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Chava Pinchuck Buy at Bookshop.org This fictional story is narrated in the first person, present by Brigitte Schmidt, a twelve-year-old girl living in Munich in the early 1940s. She goes to Jungmädelbund (Young Girls’ League) (JM) meetings with her best friend Marianne. Their group leader, Elisabeth, encourages the girls to “report” to her, and Brigitte is conflicted. Her older sister Angelika had polio, and she and her father fear that if people notice her limp, she will be sent away. Brigitte often feels this tension of whether she is a “good German” or a good daughter and sister when she does not agree with the anti-Semitic dogma taught at JM meetings. When Angelika has to fulfill her national service requirement by working in a munitions factory in Ulm, she meets the charismatic Sophie, who will be attending university with her. Soon there are more secrets in Brigitte’s house, as her

37 Days at Sea: Aboard the M.S. St. Louis, 1939 by Barbara Krasner Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel Simon Buy at Bookshop.org 37 Days at Sea: Aboard the M.S. St. Louis, 1939 by Barbara Krasner follows the story of twelve-year-old Ruthie Arons and her family as they leave their home of Germany for a new life in Cuba and hopefully, eventually, the United States. However, when the ship arrives at Cuba, they, along with many of the other passengers, are unable to dock. Ruthie is an engaging narrator, telling her story in verse/poetry. Like readers today, she loves mysteries and trying to solve them, swimming, and spending time with friends. On the ship, Ruthie befriends a young boy named Wolfie with whom she snoops around the ship, befriends the Captain, and plays games with. Despite the situation going on in their insular world and the world around them, Ruthie and Wolfie manage to have fun. Like the real passengers of the shi

 Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen Scholastic  Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Jennifer Nielsen’s newest middle grade historical fiction, Rescue , returns to the World War II time period of her Sydney Taylor Notable Book, Resistance , but with France as its setting. In Rescue , as in her other books of historical fiction, Nielsen gives us a courageous and resourceful heroine, Meg Kenyon, who lives in a rural area of Occupied France with her mother and grandmother. Meg’s father has gone to fight/spy against the Nazis, and the family has not heard from him in the two years that he has been away. When Meg finds an injured British captain in the barn behind her grandmother’s house, he offers her a way to bring her father home: If Meg leads a family of three out of France and into Spain, they’ve promised that her father will go free. All Meg has to help her on the hazardous journey is an encoded note from her father and a backpack of supplies from the captai

Hold On to Your Music: The Inspiring True Story of the Children of Willesden Lane by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen, adapted by Emil Sher, illustrated by Sonia Possentini Little Brown & Company Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Beth Gallego Buy at Bookshop.org On a cold winter day in Vienna, Lisa takes the trolley to her piano lesson, daydreaming about performing Mozart and Beethoven at the symphony hall. When she arrives, her teacher meets her at the door and tells her that the laws have changed, and he can no longer teach Jewish children. At home, Lisa’s parents comfort her, and her mother tells her to “hold on to your music. It will be your best friend.” She repeats this advice one last time as Lisa boards a train with many other children leaving for Great Britain, where their parents hope they will be safe. After arriving in London, Lisa is placed at a group foster home in Willesden Lane. She makes friends with the other children, and is pleased to find a piano that she is allowed

We Must Not Forget: Holocaust Stories of Survival and Resistance by Deborah Hopkinson Scholastic FOCUS (imprint of Scholastic) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org On the heels of her 2020 release, We Had to Be Brave: Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport , Deborah Hopkinson gives us another impeccably researched collection of Holocaust survival stories in her new book, We Must Not Forget: Holocaust Stories of Survival and Resistance . Like We Had to Be Brave, We Must Not Forget draws on oral histories, unpublished manuscripts, memoirs, and archives to weave the survivors’ memories together into a cohesive and powerful record of this horrific time in history. But middle graders will gain even more from this reading experience because of the book’s narrative structure. We Must Not Forget is divided into three sections: stories from Germany and the Netherlands, from France, and from Poland. Within each section are chapters that recount the nail-biting

Bear and Fred: A World War II Story by Iris Argaman, illustrated by Avi Ofer, translated by Annette Appel Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karin Fisher-Golton Buy at Bookshop.org I keep an eye out for books that inform children about the Holocaust and can engage their emotions without overwhelming them (which can lead to numbing out). Bear and Fred: A World War II Story is one such book. It is based on the true story of a teddy bear that belonged to a boy named Fred Lessing. Decades after he survived the Holocaust, Mr. Lessing generously gifted the bear to Yad Vashem’s museum. Captivated by their story, author Iris Argaman wrote this picture book in Hebrew, and Annette Appel translated it into the English version I review here. Told from the bear’s point of view, Bear and Fred follows the two titular characters as Fred’s family must abruptly leave their home in Delft, Holland and Fred spends the rest of the war in hiding, separated from his family. Ultimately Fred’s family reunites

 Chance: Escape from the Holocaust by Uri Shulevitz Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org Chance: Escape from the Holocaust by Uri Shulevitz is a tour de force, a culmination of his life’s work, in which he traces his family’s journey from Poland to various locations in the Soviet Union during World War II. In direct, simple, and yet beautiful prose, he matter-of-factly recounts the horrors and the hunger - such hunger! - of those days. The book also traces his personal evolution as an artist, reader, and writer. In a particularly appropriate choice of words, he says that, as a refugee, his “only refuge was drawing” and that drawing was his “home.” The title of the book reflects Shulevitz’s belief - dare I say theology? - that he and his parents were saved by chance alone. He asks why he and his non-observant parents were saved while his deeply devout grandfather was not and concludes “I have no answers.” This philosophy, hard for anyone to accept, may be

Rip to the Rescue by Miriam Halahmy Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jane Kohuth   Buy at Bookshop.org Thirteen year-old Jack Castle has been bullied for years because he us deaf in his left ear. It is 1940 and London is reeling from the Blitz. Jack’s father, a disabled veteran of World War I has been moody and angry since the war began, often reprimanding Jack and telling him how useless he is. In order to prove his worth, Jack, who is tall, has lied about his age in order to join the Messengers, teenage boys who ride their bikes through air raids to deliver critical messages. He keeps this job from his parents, who believe Jack is guiding his grandfather to a shelter and staying with him during raids. During one air raid, Jack is injured, and help comes in the form of twelve-year-old Paula, who takes him home to her father, who is a doctor. Soon Jack also finds a stray dog with a ripped ear, whom he names “Rip.” Jack’s father, like many people at the time, had Jack’s pet cats euthani

The Girl from Over There: The Hopeful Story of a Young Jewish Immigrant by Sharon Rechter, illustrated by Karla Gerard  Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Judith S. Greenblatt   Buy at Bookshop.org An unnamed Israeli kibbutz, post World War II, is the setting for this work of historical fiction. A tattered and terrified 11 year old girl, Miriam, has arrived from “over there.” The adults in the kibbutz welcome her, but 11 year old Michal, self described as the “class queen,” is consumed by jealousy and hatred. While Michal’s clique are initially suspicious and cruel, soon only Michal continues to play mean tricks. Not surprisingly, Miriam returns Michal’s hatred. However, Miriam, helped by Michal’s boyfriend Dan, learns to accept her new surroundings, and decides to reach out to Michal. As more new arrivals are welcomed and tell their stories of the horrors of the war. Michal gradually comes to understand how much Miriam has suffered, and after much hesitation apologizes. Written when Sh

The Assignment by Liza Wiemer Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Kathy Bloomfield Based on a true story, The Assignment is about two high school students who stand up to their teacher, their peers, and the entire community to stop an assignment that was given to them in their History of World Governments class. Their teacher is someone they greatly respect, but the assignment – To debate “A Final Solution to the Jewish Question” as was done at the Wansee Conference in Berlin in 1942. The book is well-written and profoundly disturbing. It contains the expected backlash to the students from hate-mongers in their school and their community, surprising revelations about the students involved and unexpected alliances that are formed along the way. Overall, an emotional, page-turning read. This is a strong contender for a Sydney Taylor prize. Given the subject matter, which is ripped from today’s headlines, and the nature of the assignment based on an actual Holocaust event, the s

We'll Soon by Home Again by Jessica Bab Bonde, illustrated by Peter Bergting, translated by Jessica Bab Bonde and Sunshine Barbito Reviewer: Meira Drazin Category: Young Adult Billed as a graphic novel, it’s hard to categorize WE’LL SOON BE HOME AGAIN by Jessica Bab Bonde and Peter Bergting. Published to critical acclaim in Sweden in 2018 and now published in the US by Dark Horse Comics, with translation by Bab Bonde and Sunshine Barbito, WE’LL SOON BE HOME AGAIN is a slim volume that tells the testimonies of six Holocaust survivors in graphic format. But its spare presentation packs a punch. Tobias, Livia, Selma, Susanna, Emerich and Elisabeth were all children when WWII and the Nazis cast their tentacles over their lives. As it says in the excellent foreword, the point of the book is that these children started out like “you and me”—possibly better—born into safety and comfort. And while the horrific results of racism and antisemitism were taking place, too many