Category: Historical

Amil and the After

by Veera Hiranandani

Kokila, 2024. 261 pages.
Review written June 20, 2024, from an advance reader copy sent to me by the publisher
Starred Review

I loved this book. Now, this is no surprise – this book features the same family as in The Night Diary, one of the books the 2019 Newbery Committee I was on chose as an Honor book. I think I read that book at least three times and loved it. I was happy to spend time with Nisha and Amil again, in a happier part of their story.

And that’s what the book is about – how do you get back to a normal life after great upheaval and trauma? In The Night Diary, Nisha and Amil’s Hindu family (even though their dead mother was Muslim) have to flee Pakistan after Partition – when the country was created overnight. Their journey was dangerous and harrowing, and they saw some awful things.

Now the family is settled in Bombay in 1948. Papa is working in a hospital there, and Nisha and Amil are going to school. But it’s hard to make friends. And it’s hard for Amil to concentrate on schoolwork. He’d rather be drawing.

It’s also hard for him to forget all the things he’s seen. And he knows he’s lucky – but what about the boys like him who are unlucky? Is there anything he can do to help?

Amil’s torn between heavy thoughts like that – and just wanting to daydream about getting a bicycle. But there’s still unrest in India, and will they even be able to stay in Bombay?

This book’s told from Amil’s perspective, and I loved spending time with him again and watching him learn to be happy again. (And you can read it if you haven’t read the first book – but that will give you more context.)

veerahiranandani.com
Penguin.com/kids

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Max in the House of Spies

A Tale of World War II

by Adam Gidwitz

Dutton Children’s Books, 2024. 320 pages.
Review written April 26, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Here’s a World War II book that’s a whole lot of fun – not sure if I’ve ever said that before.

Max Bretzfeld is a Jewish boy born in Berlin, and in 1939, he got sent to England for his own safety from the Nazis. He is taken in by a rich Jewish family headed by Lord Montagu. But Max wants to get back to Berlin to protect his parents. In England, Max encounters more antisemitism and bullying at the snobbish private school where Lord Montagu’s children attend.

But what keeps this from being a sad story about an oppressed kid is that Max is a genius. He is clever with radios, he knows how to plan a serious prank, and he knows how to get the attention of Lord Montagu’s brother, who works for British Intelligence. Max wants to go back to Berlin to protect his parents – why not go as a spy?

Oh, and did I mention? Max has two immortal creatures sitting on his shoulders. A dybbuk and a kobold joined Max when he left Germany. Only Max can see them and talk with them. They are less than thrilled about him going back to Germany.

The majority of this book is about Max’s training to be a spy. It’s unorthodox training for an unorthodox spy. And yes, all along the way, the adults question their choice about sending a Jewish child back to Nazi Germany.

So what we end up with is a cross between a spy novel and The Great Brain. Like I said, a whole lot of fun. And the Author’s Note at the back reveals that he took great pains to get historical details right, and inserted many actual historical people into the tale.

The first page of this book is a wonderful introduction to Max, so I’m going to copy out the whole thing here:

Once there was a boy who had two immortal creatures living on his shoulders.

This was the fourth most interesting thing about him.

The first most interesting thing about Max – that was his name – was that he was a genius. He could make a working radio from the junk at the bottom of a trash can, and he could usually predict what someone was going to say ten minutes before they said it.

The second most interesting thing about Max was that, when he was eleven years old, his parents sent him away from Germany, where he was born and grew up, to England. All by himself. Even though he’d never been there, didn’t know anyone there, and barely spoke any English.

The third most interesting thing about Max was that, when he got to England, he fell in with spies. Real, honest-to-goodness spies. A lot of them.

And the fourth most interesting thing about him was that he had two immortal creatures living on his shoulders.

The story does not end with this volume, even though it comes to a good stopping place. I’m definitely hooked and want to find out what will happen to this resourceful kid next.

adamgidwitz.com
Penguin.com/kids

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/max_in_the_house_of_spies.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Leaving Lymon

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Holiday House, 2020. 199 pages.
Review written April 1, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

Leaving Lymon is a “companion novel” to Finding Langston, but there’s no need to read one or the other first. In fact, for me having read Finding Langston long enough ago that I remembered it without the exact details ended up confusing me. Since the names “Langston” and “Lymon” are so similar, I wrongly thought for quite awhile that this was telling the backstory of our hero in the earlier book. I was wrong – it’s telling the backstory of the bully in the earlier book.

But aside from my confusion about where I’d seen this kid before, this is a wonderful and emotionally gripping novel about a black kid with a tough family situation growing up in the 1940s.

It starts in 1938 when little Lymon visited his father at Parchman Farm in Mississippi. Lymon didn’t know it at the time, but that farm was really a state penitentiary where the prisoners were rented out to do hard labor.

Lymon’s being raised by Grandpops and Ma (his grandma), and Grandpops encourages his love of music. But when Lymon starts to school, the letters all get mixed up in his head, and Grandpops starts getting sick.

After Grandpops dies in 1942, Lymon and Ma have to move to Milwaukee with Aunt Vera.

School never did get much better after the first day. Nice as Miss Arthur was, she wasn’t Little Leonard or Fuller or even Miss Stokes. Out on the playground, sometimes I joined in with the other boys playing tag or kickball, but when it came time to walk home, seemed like everybody went to one part of town and I went to another. Even though I was never ‘shamed about having a daddy at Parchman, I was ‘shamed now ‘bout Ma and her swolled legs and not having any people in Milwaukee ‘sides her and Aunt Vera’s family. In Vicksburg, it felt like just ‘bout everybody was family. And if they weren’t, they knew the type of people I was from.

In class, I worked on my letters, nice and slow, like Miss Arthur told me, but they didn’t look nothing like the other boys’ letters. Most times, when we finished lessons, I turned over my paper, hoping no one would see I was still writing like a baby. Seemed like I was playing a game of Mother May I? where I took one baby step while everybody else in class took five.

Lymon’s Daddy does get out of Parchman and starts coming around. But he’s a musician chasing gigs and never stays long. So when Ma gets hospitalized with her diabetes, Lymon’s Momma comes from Chicago and takes him back with her. The situation with his stepfather is never good – and that’s how Lymon ends up being a bully to Langston in Chicago.

But this story goes beyond that and what happens to Lymon after he leaves that class. We cheer for Lymon as he discovers more music and gets to a day when he stops being left.

By the time I finished, then I remembered Lymon in the other book – a character I never would have guessed anyone could get me to care about. But Lesa Cline-Ransome pulls it off and gives us a powerful story where we understand all Lymon is up against and become convinced that he’s going to manage to triumph in the end.

HolidayHouse.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.