Category: Staff Book Reviews

Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans

“These are my friends, and this is my school and it’s my house and my dad and my dog and my life” 

So says Zofia when she finds her life turned upside when her father announces he has found a partner and both she and her son Tom will be moving in with them.

This is a story about two children adjusting to a momentous change in their lives. Tom and his mother have escaped an abusive husband and father. Tom because of this is filled with neuroses including a fear of the dark. He is a lonely boy, with no friends, the outsider at school, the only stability in his life is his relationship with his mother.

Zofia is the opposite. Popular, boisterous, a leader among her peers and driven to achieve her dream of swimming to Fiji (a rocky outcrop close to where they live). She has been brought up by her father and like Tom has developed a special relationship.

This is a book about discovery. While seemingly so dissimilar they do share one characteristic – fear.

This is a beautifully written book. The language brings both Tom and Zofia alive and allows the reader to get into the skins of the protagonists. The short chapters allow the narrative to progress without being forced.

The ending is certainly special and moving – it was a delight to read.

This book would appeal from upper primary to geriatric. 

4.5 stars out of 5

 

 

  Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans

There has been much written about the Holocaust (Shoah) both as fiction and non-fiction. So, it is surprising to come across a book which has something different to say about that terrible event.

Jonathon Freedland’s The Escape Artist, is about a story of endurance, escape and exposure. Walter Rosenberg (later to become Rudolf Vrba) is a young Slovak caught up by local authorities aged 16 and sent to Auschwitz who aged 19 along with Fred Wetzler became the first Jews to escape.

In the book Rosenberg reveals his experiences in Auschwitz and no matter how much one reads or sees, these accounts do not lose their power and potency.

“It was outside human experience and, perhaps outside human imagination.”

The power of this book is not just the conditions and escape but the fact that Rosenberg (Vrba) wanted his escape to mean something. Just before his escape and perhaps the motivation to go was when he heard that Hungarian Jews were next for extermination. Rosenberg hoped his escape would help reveal the truth of what was happening in Auschwitz and maybe prevent the forthcoming atrocity. Alas between May- July 1944 over 434,000 were sent to the camp with over 80% gassed. This fact would haunt Rosenberg through his life, even though the publishing of his testimony was instrumental in putting pressure on the Hungarian government to halt the transports and contributed to saving up to 200,000 lives.

The final part of the book follows Rosenberg’s life after his escape which sees him finally settle in Canada and find some peace and acceptance in his life.

As the generation that survived the Holocaust gets fewer and fewer, books like this serve to remind us of what happened, but more importantly, about the nobility of those who survived. Their story demands to be told again and again.

4.5 stars out of 5    

Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans

This is a delightfully written and simple story about memory told from the perspective of 11-year-old Jeska. As Jeska finds out through the course of this short novel not all memories are pleasant as her father explains:

“If you cut yourself badly, you can be left with a scar, even when the wounds healed. It can be the same when you experience terrible hardship: the memory of it becomes a scar”.

So, this is a story of Jeska’s discovery of her mother’s scar and an explanation of why her mother behaves the way she does. The dark room, the insistence on quiet in the house, the need to make yourself small and not draw attention to yourself.

Set in the Netherlands during the late 1960’s Jeska is a bright girl who sometimes takes to day dreaming, but during the course of the novel comes to realise a significant event impacted her mother, World War II and the treatment of the Jews in Holland. It is also a novel about guilt, the guilt her mother feels as being the only survivor of her family.

This is a different type of holocaust novel and one worth reading alongside say Morris Geitzman’s Once series.

4.5/5 stars

 

 

 

Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans

This book had great potential.

Two sisters who lose their parents in a car crash, a miraculous recovery, a search for identity, the sisters are separated by a cult (or is it), one sister leaves the cult while the other finds it, a daughter is born within the cult is she the ‘chosen one’, an unexplained death. This should be a page turner but alas in a novel which runs for 345 pages it only becomes this from about page 300!

At times I found the writing pedestrian and the twists which should have been the big revealed were not and in fact had been broadcast much earlier. The two sisters who acted as the narrators at times caused confusion in the narrative.

So, is this book worth reading? Probably yes for the last 50 pages when what you knew and suspected are confirmed. It does reveal how a cult can take over your life and, in the process, isolate and alienate you from those around you and as such is a salutary warning.

This is a book for the older student Year 10 and above as it does deal with some sensitive issues.

2.5/5 stars

Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans

Oddity is certainly an odd book with a twisting story. It is set in the USA in the late 18th century but not in a historical period of which we know. This is an alternative history of the USA, France has not sold Louisiana but in fact retains troops in an ongoing war with the USA, to make matters even stranger this French army is odd!

Into this history appears Clover Elkin and her father who live on the fringes of society where her father is a doctor in an attempt to remove his daughter from oddities of which one is the death of her mother.

While this is a thoroughly modern novel it taps into a rich American tradition, that of the picaresque novel, think Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, a journey into which adventures abound. In this case for Clover the death of her father which leads her to meet a talking rooster who is actually the commander of US forces, a wine glass which continuously fills with wine but unfortunately was lost and tipped over causing a lake of wine, a rattlesnake which resides around the heroine’s neck and a doll of enormous strength. I told you it was odd. But underlying this is a search for truth, the truth about Clover’s mother and consequently about her own identity.

Did I enjoy this novel? Yes and no. In parts it kept me enthralled and interested and at times became rather convoluted as the story unwound. Is it worth reading well yes, though it remains an odd story.

3.5/5 stars

Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans

In 1941 on the eve of Pearl Harbour about 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived on the US mainland, mostly along the Pacific Coast. About two thirds were full citizens, born and raised in the United States. That situation changed when on December 7 Japan attacked Pearl Harbour (Hawaii) and in doing so declared war on the USA.

This graphic novel follows the Takei family as they lose their home in Los Angeles and travel to various camps in increasingly isolated parts of the USA. The novel is told through the eyes of George as his younger brother Henry and his mother and father are increasingly ostracised from American society. The novel highlights the contradictions of Executive Order 9066 which imprisoned thousands of loyal Americans whose only crime was they were either Japanese or descended from Japanese parents/grandparents.

While there are some moments of light, the family experiences the darkness of confinement and the fact they were treated like traitors to the country where over two thirds were citizens. In a war against totalitarianism, dictatorship, and prejudice they experienced all three aspects. Was this a good read? 

Over the last year I have read a few books about the experiences of children during conflict, including a graphic novel on the Vietnam war. There was something about this novel which did not match the intensity of the other novels and I think it is the author’s propensity to make judgements and preach. He obviously wrote this book to point out the terrible experiences of imprisonment and at times he captures this from the children’s and parents’ perspective and when he does so it is certainly worth reading.

So, is it a good read? Yes, but there are better books on children’s experience of war out there.

3 stars out of 5

Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans, Term 1, 2021

Many of us are familiar with books by Morris Gleitzman especially his Once series, the story of a young Jewish boy surviving the horrors of Nazi occupation or of the film The boy in the striped pyjamas which focus on the extermination camps under the Nazis. But this book takes a different perspective, that of German children as the war ends. It is based on true stories, drawing on the experiences of the Wolfskinder – German children who survived this period of great civil unrest by making their homes in the forest and living wild.

The Wolf family lived in East Prussia just before the Russian invasion of January 1945. While suffering the deprivations of war, we see a happy family. Papa, Mama, Opa, Oma (grandparent) and the children Liesl (aged 12), Otto (aged 8) and Mia (aged 2).

The narrator of this story is Liesl Wolf  and the safe and secure world she knows disintegrates around her. First her father is called up with other elderly men to face the Russians, later they hear he is missing in action. Both Liesl and Otto still believe that Hitler and the German wehrmacht (army) will save them. Gradually the adults realise the Russians have broken through and are advancing on their small town and in a panic they all flee.

The flight is confusing and terrifying and the children find it hard to accept or understand what is happening. While there are moments of joy, there is great sadness when they have  to leave their grandparents (as the grandmother is too sick to continue). Further catastrophe occurs when the wagon they are travelling on is shelled by the Russians on a frozen lake and sinks with their mother.

Alone with no food, shelter or hope, Liesl is wracked with guilt as she promised her mother that she would keep her brother and sister safe. In the course of the novel Russian soldiers pose a constant threat (but also comfort) and both German adults and children threaten their survival. The novel ends in Lithuania and how it ends … well, I will let you read the ending, which was powerful and moving.

This is a really good read – whether for teenagers or adults and one I would thoroughly recommend!

Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans

I must admit that this is the first graphic novel I have ever read and certainly I was a little dismissive of them, thinking they were like the comics I read as a boy. But this graphic novel has certainly changed my opinion of this genre.

The novel focus is the Truong family and their time in Saigon between 1961-63, a period of history I was aware of but not the details. This novel gives a personal view of a war which would dominate the area up until 1975 and beyond.

The novel starts in Washington where we meet the Truong family. A father who is Vietnamese, his wife who is French and the three children, two boys and a girl. The father works in the Vietnamese embassy and is recalled to Saigon as an assistant to the President. After a brief sojourn in France with their French grandparents the family arrives in Saigon just as the Americans are increasing their influence (through military advisors) and arming the South Vietnamese troops. For the children the move to Saigon is a series of adventures, for their mother it is to prove stressful as she boarders on a nervous breakdown.

The action of the children is juxtaposed with what was happening at the time and occasionally the children who are generally ignorant of the politics come face to face with the reality of what was happening.

The strength of this graphic novel is that it is history as seen through the eyes of the children and the worry of their parents. In the end the family relocates to London and in doing so miss the horrors which would develop.

This is a great read but also for those interested in History, as it provides a totally different way of looking at it.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars