National Siblings Day

by Barbara Bietz - Children's Book Reviews Several new novels written for older kids and teens have fascinating characters and compelling plots, involving significant events in history and contemporary issues facing society today. From the civil rights movement to immigrant children during WWII, to the effects of war on soldiers and their families, these novels will help teen readers think about their world in new ways. Is it Night or ...

AZ Lost Boys Center Phoeniz AZ An article in Sunday's New York Times reported that s a new digital archive is now available for the "Lost Boys of Sudan." The archive offers some of the Sudanese refugees who fled their country as children records of their personal war stories. The newspaper reported (in italics below) that Malek Deng, a refugee who fled at the age of 14, examined some of ...

One Thousand Children From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia One Thousand Children refers to approximately 1400 mostly Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied or threatened countries by entities and individuals within the United States of America, who specifically came unaccompanied without their parent(s). The experiences of one such girl, based on a true account, was published by Fern Schumer Chapman with the book Is It Night or ...

From Gert Krell, my German blog partner at shadowsoftheholocaust.com: Chagall's rabbi Last night, as we do every year, we joined a group of people from Hofheim at the “Türmchen“, the little former watch tower in the old town wall which had been a synagogue until the “Reichspogromnacht” (the night of the pogroms) in November 9/10, 1938. A group of pupils from the local grammar school sang a song in Hebrew, ...

Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938 One of my dedicated blog readers complained today that I didn't properly mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht. "You haven't been keeping up your blog lately," she said. "Yes, I know," I said. "I've been in and out of town for the last month." "Well, I thought you'd write something about Kristallnacht yesterday. Do you think the kids today have ever heard of it? Do you think ...

From The Crimson Review of Children's and Young Adult Literature (University of Alabama's School of Library and Information Studies): Chapman, Fern Schumer. Is It Night or Day?. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2010, 201pp. Grades 4-6. As tensions heat up and anti-Semitism becomes rampant in Germany just before the start of World War II, Edith Westerfield’s parents struggle to raise the money to send their two daughters to safety. Edith’s ...

A letter in Is It Night or Day? alludes to the similarity between the Jim Crow laws and Germany's Nuremberg laws. Some book club members have asked me about that reference. I found this comparison of the laws in a Teachers' guide: It is highly apparent that Hitler used the Jim Crow Laws as a premise for the Nuremberg Laws. Both laws specifically targeted an "inferior" people by depriving them ...

Hadassah Magazine's review in the November issue: Is It Night or Day? by Fern Schumer Chapman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 224 pp. $17.99) is a moving work of historical fiction based on the little-known One Thousand Children program endorsed by Eleanor Roosevelt, which rescued Jewish youngsters from Nazi Germany and placed them in American foster homes. Twelve-year-old Edith, her story based on the experience of the author’s own mother, was ...

Author Dinaw Mengestu I'm often asked why I write so much about my mother's experiences. Even though I never directly experienced the trauma, I inherited it. Journalist and fiction writer Dinaw Mengestu's new book, How To Read the Air covers the same emotional terrain. A recent New York Times article describes his work as "populated by exiles, refugees, emigres and children of the African diaspora, all struggling both to find ...

Gert Krell My German blog partner, Gert Krell, has responded to my entry below called My grandfather's life and death. Here are some of his comments: "Next time I go to Darmstadt to visit my grandparents’ grave (they are urn-buried), I will also visit the Jewish cemetery at Groß-Gerau and look for your grandfather’s tombstone. I deeply regret what my country has done to your family, that your grandfather was ...