Jewish

Is It Night or Day?

| Tasha

 

Is It Night or Day?: A Novel of Immigration and Survival, 1938-1942 by Fern Schumer Chapman

As anti-Semitism and the Nazis overtake Germany, 12-year-old Edith is put on a boat by her parents and sent to the U.S.  She travels alone on a boat with many other children separated from their parents too.  She moves in with her uncle and aunt in a small apartment in Chicago.  There she works for them more as a servant than a niece.  Though her older sister is also in Chicago, they rarely see one another and her sister seems to have had an easier time adapting to her new life.  Edith must learn a new language, understand the many differences between the two cultures, navigate the new family she finds herself in, all by finding an inner strength to go on without her parents.  Inspired by the experiences of the author’s mother, this book offers a poignant and often painful look at loss and survival.

Chapman’s writing is beautiful.  It captures the feeling of loss, the desperation of loneliness, and the small moments that help one survive.   The author is so skilled that readers feel deep connection to Edith and her plight without ever feeling manipulated.  Instead the emotions depicted are so raw and real that they are impossible not to feel at a gut level.

Edith is a wonderfully human heroine, filled with both good and bad emotions.  She is at times naive and at others very wise.  She is a complete portrait of a young girl caught in a situation that she cannot fix, trapped in a time without answers.  An additional appeal of the book is this glimpse into a history that few know about in the United States, when children were rescued from Nazi Germany. 

A gut-wrenchingly personal view of historical events, readers will feel connected to Edith and her plight very deeply.  Appropriate for ages 9-12, this book would do well as a class read aloud for learning about World War II from a unique perspective.  Get this into the hands of children who enjoy historical fiction with a lot of truth woven in.

Reviewed from copy received from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Check out the author’s website for more information on the true story that inspired this book.

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Under a Red Sky

| Tasha

Under a Red Sky by Haya Leah Molnar

A memoir of childhood under Communism, this book offers a real window into that world.  Growing up in postwar Bucharest, Romania, Eva lives with her extended family in one house.  This includes her grandparents, her parents, two uncles and one aunt.  Eva is surprised at age 8 to discover that her family is Jewish, though readers will know it from the start.  All of her relatives are unique and interesting.  Her father, a filmmaker, survived the Nazi concentration camps.  Her mother is a former ballerina who teachers dance to children.  Her Aunt Puica spends most of her time in her bedroom reading romance novels while her husband, Uncle Max is running into trouble at work for joking too much about the Communists.  Uncle Natan is a bachelor who still lives at home.  Her grandmother is prickly and her grandfather is doting.  The mix of all of these strong characters forms the background of Eva’s life.  They quarrel, fight, make up, love, and joke.  It is a family of very human people who are trapped behind the iron curtain, living lives so similar to our own and yet so very different and frightening.

Molnar has set just the right tone with this book.  Its universal qualities of family and childhood are played out against the repressiveness of Romanian Communism, yet it is not grim.  Moments of humor and humanity shine against the darkness, incandescent against the horrors of Communism.  As the book moves on, Eva begins to understand the dangers of her life, creating a tension that makes for intense reading.

Molnar’s depiction of her relatives is told with great relish and delight.  They are the sort of family members who shape who you are, and readers can see them shaping Eva as we watch.  Each person has their own distinct style and reactions, they are vividly depicted and as the pressures of Communism grow around them, become more and more themselves.  The characters are what make this book a pleasure to read, their colorful lives more than enough relief from what could have been a very grim tale.

Highly recommended, this book offers a memoir that reads like good historical fiction.  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from copy received from Farrar Straus Giroux.

Also reviewed by Killin’ Time Reading.

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