Jewish Book Council reviews STUMBLING ON HISTORY
By fern | General, Immigration, Reviews/Interviews - "Night or Day", Trauma
Stumbling on History: An Art Project Compels a Small German Town to Face Its Past Fern Schumer Chapman Gussie Rose Press 2016 54 Pages $17.99 ISBN: 978-0996472517 Review by Teri Markson This slender book is both a memory and a memorial, a tribute and a warning, a look at what is and what was. Author Fern Schumer Chapman first recounts the experience of her German born mother, 89-year-old Edith ...
In Memoriam – Gerda Katz Frumkin
By fern | News
In Memoriam Gerda Katz Frumkin Dec. 4, 1925 - Sept. 22, 2017 We are mourning the loss of Gerda Katz Frumkin, my mother's childhood friend. After becoming best friends on the ship from Nazi Germany to America, Edith (my mother) and Gerda lost touch with each other in 1938. In 2011, eighth graders reunited the two old friends, 73 years after they last saw each other. Like Finding My Twin ...
Association of Jewish Libraries reviews STUMBLING
By fern | News
In The Spotlight Chapman, Fern Schumer. Stumbling on History: An Art Project Compels a Small German Town to Face its Past. Lake Bluff, IL: Gussie Rose Press, 2016. (Now available from Kar-Ben Publishers) 56 pp. $17.99. (9780996472517). PBK. Gr. 6-12. Reviewed from ARC. The central story of this illustrated non-fiction book is about unique public art project honoring individual Holocaust victims. It explains one way modern Germans are recognizing and ...
Junior Library Guild’s August title: STUMBLING ON HISTORY
By fern | News
Stumbling On History is now available through the Junior Library Guild!
Interview for All-School Reads Program at Norton Middle School, Norton, MA
By fern | Interviews
What is it like knowing what your mother went through? My mother suffered terribly as a child. Before they were killed by the Nazis, my grandparents made the most painful choice any parent could face. They decided to send my mother, who was only 12 years old, to live with relatives in America. She came to this country alone. These experiences deeply defined her. By writing two books about my ...
Interview with Barbara Bietz
By fern | Interviews
From Barbara Bietz’s Blog: Please welcome author Fern Schumer Chapman. Junior Library Guild has selected her new book, Is It Night or Day? (March 2010), as a spring title. In a starred review, Booklist called the work ”powerful and eloquent,” adding, ”as with the best writing, the specifics about life as a young immigrant are universal.” A prequel to Chapman’s first book Motherland, the new book explores a little-known program which rescued ...
Interview with Fern Schumer Chapman
By fern | Interviews
When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? I had a difficult childhood, but writing saved me. I discovered that capturing my emotional life on the page could be therapeutic. As Anne Frank wrote in her diary in April 1944, “I can shake off everything if I write. My sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” What were your hobbies as a kid? What are your hobbies now? ...