Ruta Sepetys Between Shades of Gray: The Graphic Novel adapted by Andrew Donkin, art by Dave Kopka, colors by Brann Livesay

Ruta Sepetys Between Shades of Gray: The Graphic Novel

adapted by Andrew Donkin, art by Dave Kopka, colors by Brann Livesay

Philomel/Penguin Teen, 2021, 160 pages

I can't believe it has been 10 years since I first read Between Shades of Gray. It was one of those books that introduced me to a new aspect of WWII and it had such a profound influence on me when I read it, one that has stayed with me ever since. Although the novel is still certainly well worth reading, so is the new graphic novel about what happened to 15-year-old Lina Vilkas and her family. 

Lina is arrested by the Soviet secret police or NKVD along with her mother and younger brother, Jonas, taken from their home in Kaunas, Lithuania on the night of June 14, 1941. Loaded into a truck along with other families that had been rounded up, the Vilkas soon find themselves at a remote train station, where other truckloads of arrested Lithuanians are arriving. 

Everyone is put into crowded cattle cars that just sit there for days. During that time, Lina meets Andrius and the two sneak out together at night. Lina is hoping to find her father since they don't know what has happened to him. Just before the trains leave the station, she finds her father in another train.

The family is happy to know he is still alive even if they don't know what will happen to him. When their train finally leaves the station, they spend the next 42 days traveling to a remote area of Siberia, where they are forced to sign a paper that convicts them of crimes against the Soviet Union (their crime - simply being Lithuanian) and sentences them to 25 years of labor. 

Life in Siberia is hard, the winters are brutal and the degradations constantly inflicted by the Soviets make things even more difficult. Over time, Lina and Andrius find that they are attracted to each other, but often harsh conditions come between them. Eventually, they are separated when Lina and her family are sent to another prison camp in Siberia, where she finds life with Andrius even harsher. 

Lina manages to document everything that happens to her, her family, and everyone else using her artistic talent and drawing it all on whatever paper she could find and using whatever material she could draw with. She also manages to send letters to her father in another prison camp in the hope that they will reach him. But can her dream of her family being reunited after the war keep Lina's hopes and spirits up long enough to survive?

I'm always skeptical of novels that have been turned into graphic formats. It feels like a novel has so much depth that could easily get lost. But I am glad to say that Between Shades of Gray: The Graphic Novel has made the transition successfully and it is all thanks to the wonderful images that really capture so much of what happened to Lina and her family. The text is spare yet spot on, and the images are so detailed and should be throughly explored for what they have to say, too. Take, for example, this image of the chaos at the train station as truckloads of arrested Lithuanians are forced into the waiting cattle cars: 

The confusion, fear, harsh treatment and Soviet threat is all there on people's faces and in their body language.

Between Shades of Gray: The Graphic Novel is an excellent addition to the history WWII. The Soviet treatment of citizens of countries they occupied during WWII isn't as well known as the history of the cruel treatment of Jews and political enemies by the Nazis and a graphic novel just may be what some readers are most comfortable with, although I highly recommend the original novel, too. 

This book is recommended for readers age 13+

This book was an eARC gratefully received from NetGalley

A Boy is Not a Ghost by Edeet Ravel

Based on true events, this sequel to A Boy is Not a Bird continues the story of Natt Silver.  You may remember that Natt's father was arrested and sent to a gulag in Siberia after their Eastern European home came under Soviet occupation, and he was considered an enemy of the Soviet state.

Now, in the summer of 1941, Natt and his mother, along with 26 other people, have been traveling in a cattle car for more than six weeks after being arrested and are on their way to Siberia. The journey is nothing short of a lice-infested "Train of Horrors, finally ending in Novosibirsk, in southern Siberia. There, they are taken to an outdoor schoolyard where they will be staying. Natt is still haunted by the terrible thing he did after his father was arrested. His mother was told she could see his father through a window at a certain time, but when she and Natt walked by, Natt turned his head away from the window, an act he is sure he will never forgive himself for and is convinced his father won't either. 

Life in Siberia allows for a certain amount of movement, simply because escape is pretty much out of the question. But life is hard hard. There is never enough to eat, clothing is old, dirty, patched, and never warm enough. And each time their circumstances change, Natt thinks things can't get any worse, and yet they do. But Natt also makes friends wherever he goes, who can often help in get wants he wants. There is Irena, 18, who voluntarily travels to Siberia in the same cattle cart as Natt and the others, in order to try and find information about her exiled parents. Natt lives with her for a while when his mother is arrested for "stealing potatoes" after being set up by an official who needed to meet her arrest quota. And there is Olga and Peter, siblings who live in Novosibirsk and whose father has an important and useful-for-Natt job. And Gabi Mindru, 11, whose mother takes Natt in when Irena leaves to find her parents, and who nurses him back to health when he gets deathly ill. Through Gabi, Natt meets Igor, 16, whose father is an NKVD captain, but who also proves helpful to Natt, nevertheless. 

Like the first book, A Boy is Not a Ghost is an very readable novel, and narrated in the first person by Natt, who is as beguiling as ever. His story, which begins when Natt is 11-years-old ends towards the end of the war when he is 15, as you might have surmised, it is a book about fighting to survive every day against all odds. Natt, who often misread people and their motives in the first book, learns to make himself invisible, and to communicated in code and to understand when others communicate to him in code. I wrote about the first book that Natt held on to his innocence in part because there were always enough kind people in his life who really liked him, and though no longer as innocent as he once was, Natt is still an extremely likable  boyand people are often willing to help him.

He is still writing to his best friend Max in Switzerland, though he never hears from him and the reader never finds out if he made to safety. But Natt's letters are a wonderful shortcut vehicle for more giving information about what is happening with Natt and the other exiles in Siberia. 

Though it is a sequel, A Boy is Not a Ghost can be read as a stand alone novel, though I would recommend reading both books. The author, Edeet Ravel, has included a lot of information relevant to Natt's experiences under Soviet occupation in the book's back matter that I would also recommend reading. I read an eARC and did not see all of the chapter illustrations or map that will be in the published book. 

A Boy is Not a Ghost will be available on September 7, 2021. 

This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was an eARC gratefully received from Edelweiss+

A Boy Is Not a Bird by Edeet Ravel

Living in Zastavna, Romania, 11-year-old Natt Silver, a Jewish boy with asthma, has had a pretty comfortable life. He has a loving family, a best friend named Max Zwecker, and he can already speak five languages: German, Ukrainian, Romanian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. The only thing that makes life difficult is the presence of Iron Guard, a nationalist, anti-semitic Romanian movement whose members resemble those of the Hitler’s Brownshirts. When the Iron Guard comes to town, everyone hides.**

Then in the summer of 1940, just like that the Iron Guard is gone, replaced by Soviet soldiers. Even the teachers at Natt’s school are replaced with Communist teachers. Life without the Iron Guard is better until the Communists arrest Natt’s father, along with 15 other men. While he’s in jail, Natt and his classmates are taught how to be Pioneers, causing him to be torn between love for his father, now considered an enemy of the Soviets, and being a good Pioneer. 

While his father is in jail, Natt is sent to stay on a farm with friends of the family for his safety. But in the summer of 1941, when Natt is taken into custody and questioned about his mothers whereabouts, he honestly can’t tell them what they want to know. After a few days, his mother shows up, gets Natt released and they go home - to pack. Natt’s father has already been sent to a gulag in Siberia, and now Natt and his mother are being exiled to Siberia, along with thousands of others, all labeled as an “enemy of the people.” 

A Boy Is Not a Bird is an eminently readable novel, in part because the author starts Natt off as a kid who just wants to belong, and who wants to be the best Pioneer he can be. He often misreads people and their motives, leading him to believe that everything will eventually be OK. Part of the reason Natt can hold on to his innocence for so long is that there are enough kind people in his life that really like this winsome 11-year-old. Interestingly, his best friend Max is just the opposite of Natt. Max's cynicism is the window of reality that Natt lacks, but that the reader needs. Natt, it turns out, is a wonderful observer but also an unreliable narrator.

It is, however, sad to see that little by little, Natt's innocence is striped away by the actions and behavior of others. As I read Natt's first person narration of what is happening around him, his naiveté reminded me so much of Felix from Morris Gleitzman’s Once series. 

A Boy Is Not a Bird is a fictionalized story based on the ones the author's fifth grade teacher, Mr. Halpern, used to tell her class, about his childhood in Soviet occupied Zastavna. The novel ends with Natt's still on the train to Siberia, his future unresolved,  But take heart, this is only the first part of a planned trilogy. And I can't wait to read the rest. 

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from Edelweiss Plus

**FYI: In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty generally referred to as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. One of the things the pact did was define boundaries where each country had influence. But not long after Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and effectively disregarding the Pact, Joseph Stalin launched also invaded Poland. As a result, new borders were drawn and in the summer of 1940, the formerly Romanian territory of Bukovina was divided between the USSR in the north, and Romania in the south. The Soviets demanded Bukovina in the north because it was mostly Ukrainian, whereas the southern part of Bukovina was mostly Romanian. And that is where this story begins.

Far from My Home, Never to Return: a Polish Child's WWII Memoir by Nadia Bogdaniec Seluga

There are not as books written about the arrest and deportation of people living in the Eastern Europe that Stalin’s Soviet Union invaded in 1940, but what is available are excellent tellings of the cruelty so many innocent people suffered in Siberian labor camps.  Added to that body of work that includes the fictional Between Shades of Gray and Esther Hauzig’s memoir The Endless Steppe is another true account - Far From My Home, Never to Return: a Polish Child’s WWII Memoir by Nadia Seluga.

Born Nadia Bogdaniec in Lunin, Poland, she was only 8 years old when her home town was bombed and later invaded by Soviet soldiers,  It wasn’t long before the soldiers arrived at her home and arrested her family in the middle of the night.  Loaded into cattle cars with some many other Polish families, they were sent to a labor camp in Siberia.  

Life was harsh in Siberia.  No one was adequately clothed to endure the bitter cold Siberian winter.  There was very little to eat, and if a day of work or school was missed, there was nothing to eat that day.  The conditions were unsanitary, and bedbugs, lice and illness was prevalent.  But the Bogdaniec family managed to stay together, and survive.  

Then, suddenly in 1941, it was announced that all Polish prisoners had been granted amnesty, when the Soviet Union was forced to join the Allied powers in order to defeat Hitler.  But amnesty didn’t mean freedom to return home.  The family was forced to stay in Siberia for a while longer.  Unlike so many others who had to remain in Siberia, the Bogdaniec family was lucky enough to eventually be put on a train and sent southward on a journey that would take them from Siberia to Uzbekistan, Krasnovodsk, across the Caspian Sea to Pahlevi, Iran.  From Pahlevi to Teheran, then Karachi, India (now Pakistan), until [they] stopped at the northern part of Lake Victoria (Uganda, Africa) where they remained until 1948.

Seluga discusses her wartime experience openly and honestly, and a good bit of poignancy.   Yet, Seluga never falls into any kind of self-pity or resentment.  Perhaps because the Bogdaniec’s were among those fortunate enough to survive with the family intact.  And it wasn’t easy.  WW II was a time when so many families were ripped apart, and death was a constant companion, fueled by Illness, starvation, inclement weather conditions, inadequate housing and heating.

Far From Home, Never to Return is told in a series of memories and flashbacks, but in a loose linear way.   As a reader, I felt that I was sitting in Seluga’s living room while she described her life to me, in other words there is a very intimate feeling to the narrative.  Throughout the book, there are photos of Nadia as a child, along with her sisters, brothers and parents, so that by the end I felt I really knew the Bogdaniec family. 

If you are interested in the stories about those who were sent to Siberian labor camps, this is a book not to be missed.  

This book is recommended for readers age 14+

This book was sent to me by the author’s grandson, Jacob Seluga.

This is book 3 of my European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader 

The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig

One beautiful June morning in 1941, Esther Rudomin, 10, finds her happy, care free life in Vilna, Poland changed forever.  Early in the morning, her family - father, mother, grandmother and Esther, are arrested by the Soviet Army.  They are charged with being capitalists and sent on a six week long train ride in cattle car ride Siberia.  

Arriving at a gypsum mine in Siberia, they are assigned their jobs - father to drive a horse and cart, mother to work at dynamiting the mine, Esther and her grandmother to work in the fields.  The work is back-breaking, the food almost non-existent (mostly watery soup) and the summer heat unbearable in a place as endlessly flat as the Siberian Steppes.

Luckily, by the beginning of fall, the Soviet Union, the exiled Polish government and Britain were allies against the Nazis and amnesty was granted to the Polish deportees.  No longer prisoners, they were allowed to leave the mine and live in the small nearby village. 

But life in the village isn’t easy either.  The family moves into the hut of people without much more than they have, and must share a small space with not room to move around it.  But it is better than the mine and Esther is able to attend the village school.  After a series of moves from hut to hut, the Rudomins are eventually able to get their own hut.

But life is still a struggle of obtaining food, having a means of heating the hut during the long, bitter cold winter and the gradual wearing out of the clothing they had brought with them and not money to buy more.  And since so many people are bound together by the cold, the desolateness of the steppe and the struggle to survive, they are often helped by others, just as they help others when they can.   When Esther’s father is forced to serve at the Russian front, the Rudomin women are devastated, but by now quite capable, they managed to find ways of surviving.  And most importantly, they continue to have each other to lean on.  

This is a wonderful, very appealing autobiography of Esther’s life from age 10 to 15.  Hautzig has captured her childhood voice beautifully as she recalls her life - the reader meets a very indulged child and watches her become an accomplished, clever survivor.  Yet, Hautzig has also shown herself not always in the best light - there is the bratty Esther, the whinny Esther and the willful Esther - giving a sense that she was indeed a real person, not an unrealistic paragon of courage.

My only problem with The Endless Steppe is that there is no explanation about why the Rudomin’s were arrested by the Soviets for being capitalists, but not the rest of the family, and why they weren’t rounded up by the Nazis because they were Jews. 


Short History Lesson:

The answer is simple but maybe not well known.  In 1939, the Nazis and Soviets signed a 10 year non-aggression pact called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.  The pact has a clause that divided Poland - the western part to Germany and the eastern part to the Soviets.  In the summer of 1940, the Soviets began to secure eastern Poland.  But, Hitler being Hitler, he decided to pull a fast one on the Soviets and disregard to pact and invade Russia.  The Rudomins were arrested in that short space of time when eastern Poland was under Soviet control, for being capitalists because they owned a jewelry business.  


This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up
This book was purchased for my personal library


The Endless Steppe has been in print continuously since it was published in 1968.  It has received the following honors:
1969 National Book Award finalist
1969 American Library Association Notable Book
1970 Jane Addams Book Award
1971 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award


A lesson plan for The Endless Steppe is available from The UN Refugee Agency

Esther Hautzig led a very interesting life and the School Library Journal ran a fitting obituary when she passed away in 2009 that is well worth reading.

The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia
Esther Hautzig
Harper Collins
1968, 1995
256 Pages

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

The genocide carried out by the Nazis against Europe’s Jews is well known; the genocide carried out by Stalin against citizens living in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia who were considered to be enemies of the people or anti-Soviet is not nearly as well known.

Between Shades of Gray helps to fill in the particulars about Stalin’s specific form of genocide. It tells the story of one family taken from their home in the middle of the night in June 1941 who became part of the mass deportations to Soviet prisons and labor camps. The story is told from the point of view of 15 year old Lina Vilkas. Lina was a typical girl, living in Kaunas, Lithuania. She was happy, friendly, just beginning to notice boys and looking a talented artist forward to a summer at a prestigious art school. Life was very good for the Vilkas.

That all changed on the night of June 14, 1941. First, Lina’s father didn’t return home from his job as provost of the university. Then, in the middle of the night, Lina is taken in her nightgown, along with her mother and her 11 year old brother Jonas by armed members of the NKVD. The family was put on a truck along with many others who had been rounded up; hours later, they arrived at a remote train station along with many more truckloads of people. Here male and female are separated, Jonas sent to the male side. His desperate mother eventually manages to buy him back with a gold watch. Next, they are loaded onto crowded cattle cars and sit in them in the summer heat for what feels like days on end. Lina and Jonas meet Andrius, 17, whose mother also saved him, telling the NKVD he was a simpleton and the three become friends.

Eventually, the trains begin moving and 42 days after they were taken from their homes, they arrived at the Aftai Labor Camp. Lina and her family are placed in a crude hut where they must pay the peasant woman inside rent to stay, and must work long hard hours to get food rations – a chunk of bread, some watery soup. Conditions are deplorable. Many lack proper winter clothing with the result that when the weather changes, many of them get sick and die. Through it all, Lina secretly documents everything she sees through her drawings. She also develops a serious attachment to Andrius, who has access to bits of food he can steal and readily pass along, helping to keep the Vilkas family alive. Lina’s mother, Elena, shares everything with the peasant they live with, much to Lina’s chagrin. Nevertheless, it makes life in the hut easier and seems to buy the peasant woman’s silence.

After 264 days working at the Aftai Labor Camp, some of the deportees are loaded up onto another train and make the long trek, 134 days, to create a labor camp in Trofimovsk, Siberia. Lina must say good-bye to Andrius, who tells her it is not good-bye, he will find her some day. By now, Lina wants and considers Andrius to be her boyfriend, a reason to be strong and not give up. Arriving just across the Artic Circle in August, it is already freezing. The deportees now consist of not only Lithuanians, but also Latvians, Estonians and Finns. The men are told they must build comfortable building for the NKVD out of the fine materials that were brought. The women are told to build huts for themselves out of whatever they could find in the barren landscape of the Artic before the first snow or they will perish.

Can Lina and her family survive the Artic winter and the cruel treatment of the camps commander? And will Andrius find Lina again, in the middle of nowhere?

Throughout, Lina feels a compulsive need to draw and document everything she sees, even if it is only on some small bits of paper she manages to get her hands on. As she narrates the story of their arrest, deportation and survival in the labor camps, you can see her drawing in her words; she speaks with a true artist’s eye for detail. And nothing is spared, from the toilet conditions to the old woman who scraped off and ate the bread that had been spit on her shoes by the contemptuous commander of the Artic camp.

Scenes like those make this was a very emotionally wrenching novel based in fact, an example of the very best kind of historical fiction and one not to be missed. I was drawn in the moment I read the first line; “They took me in my nightgown.” All of the characters are realistically drawn, right down to those who grumbler, complainer and think only of themselves. They are simply ordinary people in extraordinary times who must learn how to survive.

Between Shades of Gray is a powerful book, and the excellent writing sweeps you along Ms. Sepetys has done meticulous research. She writes in the Author’s Note that she was inspired by her own Lithuania heritage and the member’s of her father’s family who were rounded up by the NKVD and, like Lina’s family, imprisoned in labor camps.

Many of the people rounded up and subjected to hard labor in remote camps throughout the Soviet Union were given long sentences, often as long as 25 years. In reality, those who survived began to be released in 1953. By the end of the 1950s, their release was complete.

Ms. Sepetys has included two maps at the beginning of the novel. The first is simply a map to show the great distance the prisoners traveled from Kaunas, Lithuania to Trofimovsk, Siberia; the second map is a timeline of the places mentioned and the time spent in each place. I found them extraordinarily helpful while reading.

This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up.
This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL.

Ruta Sepetys discusses Between Shades of Gray on her website at
http://www.betweenshadesofgray.com/

A useful discussion guide may be downloaded at http://www.betweenshadesofgray.com/bookclubs.php