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Review: Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Waisman

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Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Waisman

Boy From Buchenwald
Robbie Waisman
with Susan McClelland
Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Published May 11, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Boy from Buchenwald

It was 1945 and Romek Wajsman had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a brutal concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured, and had no idea where his family was-let alone if they were alive. Along with 472 other boys, including Elie Wiesel, these teens were dubbed “The Buchenwald Boys.” They were angry at the world for their abuse, and turned to violence: stealing, fighting, and struggling for power. Everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation.

Romek Wajsman, now Robbie Waisman, humanitarian and Canadian governor general award recipient, shares his remarkable story of transforming pain into resiliency and overcoming incredible loss to find incredible joy.

My Review

I feel like I’ve been sitting at my keyboard awhile struggling for the right words to review this book. It’s definitely one that left me speechless, in a good way. I’ve read NIGHT by Elie Wiesel, and a couple other accounts of surviving Nazi concentration camps, but it never gets easier to read about it. The horror and shock of it strikes me fresh every time, and it should.

I feel like this book does a really great job balancing the reality of what happened with an understanding of its audience as young readers. The authors give a frank account but seem to know when to zoom in or zoom out on the scene being described. There’s a gentleness to the way the story is told. Like it’s not only being told my someone who’s survived, but someone who understands and connects with other kids. I’m not doing a great job explaining this. I guess maybe what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t surprise me at all that Waisman speaks to schools. It seems like he has a gift for it.

A lot of the story focuses on Romek’s recovery from imprisonment in Buchenwald. At first he has very few memories of his life before with his family, or of happiness. At the beginning of each (or most) chapters, he flashes back to a memory, sometimes difficult ones. As he has time to grieve and to heal, those flashbacks show his memories gradually returning. And the progression of them shows its own journey through trauma and anger and loss and until finally he’s able to remember happy moments from his childhood.

Conclusion

BOY FROM BUCHENWALD is an inspiring story about grief and healing. It’s about the way that we need each other. It’s about the worst ways in which we hurt one another and the best ways we help one another heal. I loved it, and I think it’d make a great addition to a classroom library or Holocaust study.

Content Notes for The Boy from Buchenwald

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Most major characters are Jewish and Holocaust survivors.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Two instances of mild profanity. One is a reference to a name for a ship carrying Jewish refugees that was turned away from other countries. Another refers to time spent in a concentration camp as being in hell.

Romance/Sexual Content
Reference to children being hidden by the women in the concentration camp brothels.

Spiritual Content
Some scenes describe Jewish services and celebrations. After being liberated from Buchenwald, some of the boys take refuge in faith while others can’t reconnect with faith at all.

Violent Content
Some brief descriptions of torture, starvation, and cruelty toward prisoners of the camps and Jews under Nazi occupation. The boys develop a reputation as angry and destructive.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of BOY FROM BUCHENWALD in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Lucky Girl by Jamie Pacton

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,

Lucky Girl
Jamie Pacton
Page Street Kids
Published May 11, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Lucky Girl

58,642,129. That’s how many dollars seventeen-year-old Fortuna Jane Belleweather just won in the lotto jackpot. It’s also about how many reasons she has for not coming forward to claim her prize.

Problem #1: Jane is still a minor, and if anyone discovers she bought the ticket underage, she’ll either have to forfeit the ticket, or worse . . .

Problem #2: Let her hoarder mother cash it. The last thing Jane’s mom needs is millions of dollars to buy more junk. Then . . .

Problem #3: Jane’s best friend, aspiring journalist Brandon Kim, declares on the news that he’s going to find the lucky winner. It’s one thing to keep her secret from the town — it’s another thing entirely to lie to her best friend. Especially when . . .

Problem #4: Jane’s ex-boyfriend, Holden, is suddenly back in her life, and he has big ideas about what he’d do with the prize money. As suspicion and jealousy turn neighbor against neighbor, and no good options for cashing the ticket come forward, Jane begins to wonder: Could this much money actually be a bad thing?

My Review

I loved a lot of things about this book. Here are a few, in no particular order: it’s not centered around a romantic relationship; it features people dealing with grief in really disparate ways and explores how that impacts their relationship; I love the friendship between Brandon and Jane.

So, first, I loved that LUCKY GIRL isn’t about the lotto ticket leading her to love. Not that there’s anything wrong with romance, but sometimes it’s nice to read stories that don’t center around romantic love, or the idea that being in love or finding the right person solves all the problems. I like that Jane navigates some tricky relationships and has to make decisions where the outcome isn’t obvious.

I also loved the friendship between Jane and Brandon. They had a great dynamic between them and it led to a lot of fun and a lot of truth coming out. Their friendship made LUCKY GIRL a really fun read.

Jane’s dad passed away years before the story begins, and Jane and her mom deal with that loss in really different ways. While Jane wants to be patient with her mom and understands that her issues spring from her grief, she also has a lot of frustration and fear about her mom’s behavior. That felt really real to me. I would have liked to see a little bit of what happened to her mom at the very end of the book, but I’m not sure if that would have tied things up too neatly? I’m not sure.

Since Jamie Pacton’s debut, THE LIFE AND (MEDIEVAL) TIMES OF KIT SWEETLY was one of my favorite books from last year, I feel like LUCKY GIRL had a lot to live up to. It’s a completely different story, but a really great one. I’m happy to have them on shelves next to one another, and I think readers who enjoyed Kit’s story will love Jane’s too.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Jane is bisexual. Her best friend Branon is Korean-American.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. References to sex. In one scene, a boy briefly reaches under a girl’s shirt.

Spiritual Content
Jane writes private messages to her dad, who has passed on, through his Facebook page.

Violent Content
Holden and his friends throw water balloons at other people and shake an unanchored space. They’re obviously being jerks. In one scene, teens break into a gas station and damage an item.

Drug Content
The teens in Jane’s town spend weekend nights at the beach on the lake drinking alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of LUCKY GIRL in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

The Ones We’re Meant to Find
Joan He
Roaring Book
Published May 4, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Ones We’re Meant to Find

Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay. Determined to find her, Cee devotes her days to building a boat from junk parts scavenged inland, doing everything in her power to survive until the day she gets off the island and reunites with her sister.

In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara is also living a life of isolation. The eco-city she calls home is one of eight levitating around the world, built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. With natural disasters on the rise due to climate change, eco-cities provide clean air, water, and shelter. Their residents, in exchange, must spend at least a third of their time in stasis pods, conducting business virtually whenever possible to reduce their environmental footprint. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia much preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return.

Now it’s been three months since Celia’s disappearance, and Kasey has given up hope. Logic says that her sister must be dead. But as the public decries her stance, she starts to second guess herself and decides to retrace Celia’s last steps. Where they’ll lead her, she does not know. Her sister was full of secrets. But Kasey has a secret of her own.

My Review

Sisters and secrets– two of my favorite things in a book! I had been hearing about this book online for a long time, and could not resist reading it. The story, like the back cover copy suggests, gives each sister’s point of view. In Kasey’s point of view, we see the past, things that happened months before Cee begins telling her story.

I loved both girls’ characters so much. I also loved U-me, the dictionary and questionnaire rating robot. It might not seem like a bot that follows Cee around defining words and rating her declarative statements on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree would add a huge amount to the story, but it really does! U-me is the best.

As the description promises, this is a story with twists and turns, the kind where you have to keep going back and reevaluating things you took for granted earlier in the book. Where new information changes your perception of what’s already happened. I love stories like that. It’s also a story that explores relationships and secrets and how some secrets can destroy a relationship if you let them.

I really enjoyed THE ONES WE’RE MEANT TO FIND. I loves its layers and the pull between the two sisters. Readers who enjoyed WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart or FRAGILE REMEDY by Maria Ingrande Mora should check this one out.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Both main characters are Asian.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Some nudity. Kissing between boy and girl. Two scenes give brief descriptions of sex.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A boy stops a thief by attacking him. A girl gets injured in the episode. A boy tries to choke someone. References to a terrorist attack.

Drug Content
Some descriptions of drinking and using drugs (though they appear to be legal drugs) at a bar and party.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of THE ONES WE’RE MEANT TO FIND in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Six Feet Below Zero by Ena Jones

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Six Feet Below Zero
Ena Jones
Holiday House
Published April 20, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Six Feet Below Zero

A dead body. A missing will. An evil relative. The good news is, Great Grammy has a plan. The bad news is, she’s the dead body.

Caught in a one-of-a-kind predicament, 12-year-old Rosie and her younger brother, Baker, must honor their great-grandmother’s final wishes by pretending she’s still alive until they can find her will and locate their dear Aunt Tilly. Rosie and Baker do their best to follow Great-Grammy’s plan and act as if everything is completely normal, but as their lies get bigger and bigger, so do their problems. And the biggest problem of all? Their wicked grandmother, the horrible Grim Hesper! 

My Review

Holy smokes, this book was so good. Like, it’s every bit as good as that first paragraph of the summary promises. I loved the zaniness of it. It’s all my favorite things about those comedies where everything goes wrong, and it’s hilarious, but you can’t stop rooting for the good guys to get to the other side in the end, even if you can’t see how that could be possible sometimes.

SIX FEET BELOW ZERO is absolutely a book to make you laugh and cry. Possibly at the same time. The grief that Rosie and her brother experience over Great Grammy’s death and the weight of keeping it a secret felt real and heartbreaking. But so many ridiculous things happen! It’s fantastic. Honestly. It’s part Arsenic and Old Lace and part From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Also, there are recipes in the back of the book. They’re things referenced in the book, which was a totally charming touch. I absolutely have to try the cookies!

If you liked DOUBLE THE DANGER AND ZERO ZUCCHINI by Betsy Uhrig or THREE TIMES LUCKY by Sheila Turnage, definitely check out SIX FEET BELOW ZERO.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
I think the major characters are white. Rosie’s friend and neighbor is Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Rosie and her brother hide their great grandmother’s body in a freezer in the basement.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of SIX FEET BELOW ZERO in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Glitter Gets Everywhere by Yvette Clark

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Glitter Gets Everywhere
Yvette Clark
HarperCollins
Published May 4, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Glitter Gets Everywhere

Kitty’s mother died on an inappropriately sunny Tuesday. So much has changed in Kitty’s life over the last few months, and she needs the world to stop spinning around her. She needs things to return to normal — or as normal as they’ll ever be.

Normal definitely does not include her family moving from their home in a cozy corner of London all the way to New York City. Moving means leaving behind her friends and neighbors, her grandmother, and all the places and people that help Kitty keep her mother’s memory alive.

New York City is bright and bustling and completely different from everything Kitty has known. As she adjusts to her new school, explores her new city, and befriends a blue-haired boy, Kitty wonders if her memories of her mother don’t need to stay in one place — if there’s a way for them to be with Kitty every day, everywhere.

With her wry, poignant wit, Kitty tells a universal story about the grief of losing a beloved family member, the fears of starting over, and the challenges of how to remake a family in this powerful, heartfelt debut novel.

My Review

When I agreed to review this book, I had no idea what I’d be going through when it came out. Reading a book centered around grief while grieving has been an interesting journey. A lot of things Kitty experienced really resonated with me. I loved the way the story shows different characters responding to grief in different ways, too. It’s really Kitty’s story, but around the edges of her own experience, we get to see other people wrestling with grief in their own ways.

This book is packed with a fantastic cast of characters. There’s Kitty’s older and often antagonistic sister Imogen, who knows all the things the cool kids know. There’s Kitty’s dad, treading water, trying to keep the family afloat and both be available to his girls but also shelter them from some of his own grief and fears about the future. So relatable. I loved Kitty’s spunky grandmother, with her strong opinions and fierce insights. And the wacky Mrs. Allison, the British baking star with her lovable dog, mothering everyone and fussing over them all with cookies and cakes. Something about all those people in a room together made those scenes really sparkle.

Kitty’s grief is real and raw and very relatable. I found myself nodding along to some of her observations and taking comfort in her refuge of colors. I loved the relationship between her and Imogen, with its sparks of tension and tenderness underneath. GLITTER GETS EVERYWHERE is a therapy-positive story, but it’s also real about some of the struggles of therapy. Sometimes things don’t make sense the first time you hear them. Sometimes things a therapist says don’t connect with you at the time or ever. But other times, it provides a vehicle for you to say things you didn’t know you needed to say or to hear healthy things you didn’t know would challenge what you believe.

All in all, I’m so happy I read this book. I love its tenderness and sadness and its surprising joy. I think readers who enjoyed CHIRP by Kate Messner or CATERPILLAR SUMMER by Gillian McDunn will love this book.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 to 14.

Representation
Kitty and her family are white and British.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity appears a few times. Strong British profanity appears a few times.

Romance/Sexual Content
A kiss on the cheek between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Kitty wonders what happens after someone dies and talks about sometimes feeling her mom present with her really strongly.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
One of Kitty’s friends mentions that his mom has a drinking problem.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of GLITTER GETS EVERYWHERE in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Firebird Song by Arnée Flores

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , , , , ,

The Firebird Song
Arnée Flores
Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Published June 8, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Firebird Song

The Kingdom of Lyrica was once warm and thriving, kept safe by the Firebird, whose feather and song was a blessing of peace and prosperity. But the Firebird disappeared, and Lyrica is now terrorized by the evil Spectress who wields her powers from within a volcano. All that remains is a mysterious message scrawled on the castle wall in the Queen’s own hand: Wind. Woman. Thief.

Young Prewitt has only known time without the Firebird, a life of constant cold, as his village is afraid to tempt the volcano monsters with even the feeblest fire. But he has heard whispers that the kingdom’s princess survived the attack . . . and he is certain that if he can find her, together they can save Lyrica.

Princess Calliope has no memories beyond living on her barge on the underground lake. But as she nears her twelfth birthday, she is certain there is more to life than the walls of a cave. When Prewitt finds her, he realizes that she is the missing princess: the only hope for Lyrica. Determined to decipher the meaning of her mother’s strange message and find the Firebird, Calliope and Prewitt set off on a quest that puts them in more danger than either of them ever anticipated.

My Review

I love this book. The cover reminds me of the series by THE UNICORN QUEST by Kamilla Benko, and I think readers who liked that series will definitely like this book. I expected to find an imaginative fantasy story with bright, young heroes, and I did find that. But this book has so much more than that.

The story centers around the opposing forces the Firebird and the Demon. The Demon feeds on fear, so keeping people hopeless and afraid strengthens it. But the Firebird can be summoned by a queen full of hope, and it can drive out fear and defeat the Demon. I love this. It possibly sounds a little cheesy the way I’ve explained it, but in the story it felt really raw and beautifully done.

The main characters are both twelve, and they both wrestle with these mixed messages of coming of age at twelve– Calliope is told she’s reached the age of hope, and Prewitt learns he’s ready to take up his place learning to be the Bargemaster like his father– and being told they’re still children and can’t do anything important. You’re just a girl, someone tells Calliope at one point.

But it’s these two twelve-year-olds who take on the Demon in the quest to change their world. They find their own courage, and they inspire others. Their hope becomes contagious. I love that so much. I got all weepy at all these different points in the story when characters were brave and hopeful in the face of pretty steep odds. It really made me think about how powerful hope is. How it is the catalyst that can lead to real change.

This is one of those books I feel like I’ll be talking about for a long time and sneaking into Christmas stockings and reading lists. It’s so good. So worth reading, especially if you’re feeling discouraged.

Readers who enjoyed THE STORM KEEPER’S ISLAND by Catherine Doyle or SEEKER OF THE CROWN by Ruth Laurin need to check this one out.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
I didn’t pick up on any clear specific representation. Some characters are described as having bronze skin.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Two supernatural creatures, a Firebird and a Demon have the ability to appear in the world. The Demon feeds on fear. The Firebird is summoned by a queen full of hope and can break the Demon’s hold on the world.

Violent Content
Some descriptions of battle and references to people being killed by monsters.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of THE FIREBIRD SONG in exchange for my honest review.