Book Reviews

Author: Uri Shulevitz
This is an autobiographical story where Shulevitz describes his early childhood in Turkestan. When war forces his family to leave their home and seek safety in a distant land, they have no food or books and live in a single room with a dirt floor. His father decides to spend what little money they have on a map of the world instead of on food. Young Uri and his mother are initially furious; they have nothing to eat. But when the father hangs the map on the wall, “Our cheerless room was flooded with color.” Exotic place names inspire visions of mountains, cities, temples and deserts. Uri’s fantasies allow him to spend “enchanted hours far, far from hunger and misery” and forgive his father. Whimsical pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations show the places in his imagination coming to life as he flies over continents, picturing what they would be like. This beautiful book is ideal to spark any discussion about the power of imagination.

Year Released: 2008
Grades K-3

Author: Eve Bunting
A young boy named Robert tells this colorfully illustrated fictional story of watching his father and a thousand co-workers erect the Golden Gate Bridge over the San Francisco Bay during the 1930s. He refers to the project as “Pop’s Bridge” believing his father’s role as an ironworker is more significant than those of the other workers. Robert and his friend Charlie Shu, whose dad is a painter on the bridge, watch the bridge’s progress through binoculars from Fort Point. They also spend their time creating putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the Golden Gate. An accident happens on the bridge leaving Robert with a new appreciation for all of the construction workers, including Charlie’s dad. Author Eve Bunting emigrated from Ireland in 1959 and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on her first day in America. While this story makes no reference to immigration, it does imply how people of varying ethnic backgrounds have worked together here this country to make great things happen, including building the impossible bridge. The generous illustrations vividly depict the Golden Gate while occasionally making caricatures of the characters. A good read for primary students.

Year Released: 2006
Grades 1-4

Author: Elvira Woodruff
Darcy Heart O’Hara was a noticer. Living with her family in the townland of Pobble O’Keefe, Ireland in 1845, Darcy noticed the things that her busy, hardworking family missed. She saw the dew-covered spider web across her bucket’s rim and she often stopped gathering eggs to watch the cloud castles pass. Though she lacked pockets, Darcy would secret away “small beauties” such as pebbles, flowers, and butterfly wings in the hem of her dress. As the potato crops failed and the others in her family saw only the devastating effects of the poverty and loss that followed, Darcy continued to collect the small beauties of her landscape. After the landlord burns the family’s cottage and they are forced to accept the Crown’s passage to America, it is Darcy’s collection, pulled from the hem of her dress that brings the family the solace of memory of Ireland. Inspired by a story about Henry Ford retrieving his family’s hearthstone from Ireland and installing in his home in America, Elvira Woodruff’s fictional immigration story is one to which many of us can relate. Rich illustrations by Adam Rex that evoke the time period of the Great Famine, help make Small Beauties an excellent introduction to issues of immigration, memory, and family for very young readers.

Year Released: 2006
Grades K-3

Authors: Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and Bernice Steinhardt
In 1939, when she was twelve years old, Esther Nisenthal saw Nazi soldiers arrive in her tiny village in central Poland. From that moment Esther’s life took a dramatic turn and the events of the next six years would become the stories she would tell her family over her lifetime. At the age of 50 Esther began to retell her memories in a series of hand embroidered panels. With remarkable detail and hand-stitched text, each panel tells a portion of Esther’s journey through the Holocaust. The story begins with the family’s rural life before the war, describes the depravations and terror of the Nazi occupation, and follows Esther as she and her sister, Mania are separated from the rest of the family and forced into hiding in the forest and passing as Catholic farm girls in order to escape deportation to the death camps. In 1944 the village where they are living is liberated by the Russian army, freeing Esther and Mania. Their joy at liberation is short lived when they discover that the rest of their family perished at Maidanek. The final panel shows Esther, her husband, Max, and their infant daughter arriving in America. As they gaze at The Statue of Liberty Max’s cousin, Clara greets them aboard ship saying, “…this will be your America.” Esther exquisitely detailed embroideries make her remarkable story of survival unforgettably moving and provide an unusual way to tell middle grade students the story of the Holocaust.

Year Released: 2005
Grades 4-8