Tamar by Mal Peet

I've been reading a lot on my kindle this summer, and Amazon does a very nice job of feeding my reading addiction by sending me a daily email with a bargain priced book.  I quickly delete about 99% of these emails because they are mostly adult genre fiction that I don't often read (I make an exception for the occasional cozy mystery).  Still, every once in a while, Amazon throws me something I can't resist for $1.99, and Tamar was one of those titles.  I had never heard of Mal Peet's Carnegie Medal winning novel...not a surprise since Peet is a largely British writer.  Still, the plot teaser intrigued me, so I bought it.  I'm glad I did; Tamar is one of those rare novels that I think would appeal to a large cross-section of readers.

Broadcasting suitcase used by espionage agents 

Historical fiction lovers will enjoy the realistic portrayal of the difficulties of life in Nazi occupied Netherlands.  Mystery lovers will enjoy the parallel plot of young Tamar trying to understand her grandfather's suicide and the box that he left her.  Realistic fiction readers will key into the enormous psychological tension in the novel.  Those who prefer the espionage thriller will thrive on the sections about British espionage during WWII and the Dutch Resistance movement.  And, yes, there is a complicated romantic situation.  Something for everyone!

I will admit that I guessed at least part of the ending, but I still very much enjoyed the journey getting there.  I would recommend Tamar to mature 8th grade readers mostly because of the complicated plot and a few vulgarities.  I look forward to reading more from Mal Peet!

Take What You Can Carry--graphic novel

The graphic novel Take What You Can Carry by Kevin C. Pyle is another parallel plot story where the author brings together two stories that seem to be unrelated at the beginning.  The first story, told in silent sepia, begins right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor sets in motion the internment of Japanese-Americans.  This is always a poignant story, one that too few Americans are aware of.   I've written about some non-fiction curriculum links in another post on Weedflower, so I won't repeat that information.

Graphics from Macmillan Publishing website

The alternating text is set in suburban Chicago in 1978...the blue and white illustrations remind me of the '70's...not a monochromatic era, but one in which the colors seem to be bland when viewed in retrospect.  I guess I've been looking at too many photos from my childhood lately.  I realize that colors have faded in the last forty years, but I do remember those awful olive green and cream colored appliances very well!  So, the color resonates with me, but Kyle's part of the story does not.  I do like how the writer connects Kyle's story to Ken's.  I love how two people from very different cultures and generations come to some understanding of one another's position.  I particularly like one aspect of Kyle's character that comes into play in the story (I don't want to give too much away), but I don't really like Kyle.  I don't really see his motivation for acting like a jerk especially when he could have allied himself with a more sensible friend.

The story of the Japanese-Americans does not get much play in the curriculum.  Most teachers, and I think rightly so, will present the Holocaust literature instead.   However, I think that Take What You Can Carry might be able to introduce a generation to this piece of American history.  It could easily be added reading to a World War II literature unit or read in comparison/contrast to a Holocaust story.  Because it is so short (I was done in about 45 minutes, and I believe there was a catnap in there as well), it is not a book that will take a lot of reading time, but it will introduce the topic well.  One thing that I would say to potential readers, if you don't know much about the Japanese internment, it would be wise to read the historical notes on the last pages.  This information will provide the reader with the context to understand the "silent film."  I would recommend this book to students grade 7 or 8 and above.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

An often-ignored aspect of World War II history is the story of the Eastern European countries that got swallowed by the Soviet Union and remained behind the Iron Curtain until the 1990’s. If one only looks at the casualty count, Stalin’s brutality exceeds that of Hitler. When I’ve mentioned that fact to my students, someone inevitably asks why they have never heard of him. And, I have some guesses, but no real good answer. Perhaps because the Soviet Union was our ally during the War? Perhaps because there were many communist sympathizers in the United States? Perhaps because the USSR was such a formidable adversary that it took sixty years of a Cold War to overcome it? My best guess is that Hitler’s systematic and efficient attempt to wipe the Jewish population and culture off the face of Europe through gas chambers and crematoriums defies his humanity. Even the gulag, by all accounts a horrific system of labor camps intended to work its inmates to death, seems to pale in comparison to the philosophy behind Auschwitz.

The young adult novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys addresses this largely forgotten era. The beginning of World War II in Lithuania saw the protagonist Lina looking forward to studying the arts, but when the NKVD invades their home one night and throws her family onto a truck, she must learn to quickly adjust. As the family is taken to a labor camp deep inside of the Soviet Union, Lena discovers that she can hold onto hope through her art. She also learns to admire her mother who seems to have a knack for finding the humanity in the most hardened of souls.

The author’s note tells the reader that the author spent a great deal of time interviewing Lithuanians who had lived under Soviet rule, and her research certainly shows in her novel. While never failing to show that survival was possible, Lina’s story convinced me of the horror of the Stalinist reign.
A fascinating and realistic book for students grade 8 and above. Shades of Gray has been nominated for the 2013 RI Teen Book Award.

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

The last unit I teach to the eighth grade is on the Holocaust. I like to joke with the kids that as graduation looms, I think it is time to get really depressing. One of the best speakers we had this year was a Holocaust survivor that I contacted through the Rhode Island Holocaust and Research Center. She had lived near the Black Forest as a young girl and had memories of Kristalnacht and the early persecution of Jews. Her father had been interred in Dachau but was allowed to leave the over-crowded camp when his family's immigration paperwork was processed. They were on one of the last steamships allowed to leave the country with Jewish immigrants. All of her grandparents died in concentration camps. My 8th graders didn't fidget, they didn't giggle, they didn't poke one another with pencils, or do any of the other annoying things they tend to do.  Nope, they listened!

Warsaw, Poland, 1941. Yad Vashem Photo Archive

But, I digress. The relevant detail for the book Milkweed is a comment that the speaker made about the book Boy in the Striped Pajamas that I think applies here: it is a novel that doesn't portray the historical details of the Holocaust very well (and yes, I understand that it wasn't really intended to). In both cases, the unreliable first person narration requires the reader to approach the novel with a great deal of prior knowledge, or she will miss a lot of the historical allusions. Neither is a book for students who know nothing about the Holocaust; they will simply become confused.

That said, I like Milkweed better than Boy.  Neither book has a realistic narrator, but Misha, the narrator of Milkweed is at least not as epically naive as Bruno in Boy (I'm sorry to be harsh there, but I had a nine year old when I read the book for the first time, and she would not have been so obtuse).  Misha is an orphaned Gypsy boy who roams the streets of Warsaw perfecting the art of stealing.  He befriends other orphans as well as a Jewish family and finds himself forced into the Warsaw ghetto.  This is a story of Misha trying to understand who he is in the midst of a society intent on labeling him as an inferior.  A very interesting story, but one in which some loose ends don't get neatly tied up.  For example, a great deal is made about a necklace that Misha wears leading me to think that it would have some significance later in the book.  However, Misha's friend spitefully throws it over the wall, and it never comes up again.  It really made me wonder if Spinelli had had an idea about how to end, then changed his mind and needed to get rid of the "evidence."  Mention of the Warsaw Uprising is brief and would be missed by a reader not looking for it.

All in all, a very satisfying end to my yearly Holocaust reading.

Japanese-American Internment

Cynthia Kadohata wrote Weedflower to honor her father's experiences in the Poston, Arizona internment camp during World War II.  While most middle school students know about the Holocaust, very few know about the infringements on civil rights that occurred right here in the United States.  Most, if not all, of the Japanese living on the West Coast were moved to camps in places like Manzanar or Poston.  Those Japanese who immigrated to the United States were often held in higher security facilities than those who were second or third generation.
     In the novel Sumiko is a young girl farming with her family in California when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.  Sumiko is separated from her grandfather and sent with the rest of her family to Poston.  The conflict in the novel is created partially by the fact that Poston is run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs since it is part of the Hopi reservation.  While this novel paints an interesting portrait of the era, it is not a story that moves along quickly as the plot is a little thin.  Sumiko learns to make friends in the novel and to come to terms with the events that have challenged her family, but these events are not enough to entice me to give this book my highest recommendation.

Butte Camp looking to the Southwest--National Archives

I liked the book; I found its portrayal of the discrimination faced by the Japanese during the war to be sad and, of course, unfair.  However, as my kids say not a lot of "action."  Still, it would be interesting to read this book or a similar one and compare it to the more recent Patriot Act passed after 9/11 when Americans seemed more than wiling to let the government compromise their civil rights in exchange for a greater sense of security.


The National Archives photos of the War Relocation Camps in Arizona provide a nice primary resource to act as a supplement to reading the novel.  The Library of Congress also has a Japanese American Internment lesson plan including oral histories and photographs.  Some of the photos are by famous photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams.

Penny From Heaven by Jennfier Holm

I made my son read this book. It is definitely not the typical book that I recommend to him, not enough action, but I think he enjoyed it anyway. I had him read it, because I thought it might give him a glimpse of what his grandfather's life growing up in New Jersey as an Italian American might have been like as Penny is a young girl caught between the worlds of her Italian father's family and her more traditionally "American" mother's. The book also hints at a small piece of our family history lore...Because my father-in-law and his parents were born in Sicily, they were not allowed to own radios during WWII. That little piece of history comes up in the story as well. My son brought up another book from the era of WWII after reading Penny from Heaven, Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki and Dom Lee. Not that the two books have enough in common to be read as a pair, but they both document injustice against ethnic groups during the war.

Penny is one of those books that will bring up conversations about what life used to be like for children. It is a particularly good read for Italian American children...and we have plenty of those in RI!