Odin's Promise by Sandy Brehl (Review and Giveaway)

Life hadn't changed much for Mari, 11, and her beloved elkhound dog Odin when the Nazis invaded Norway and some German soldiers moved into her village, Ytre Arna.  At least, not until one day in late August when she and Odin ran into two soldiers, nicknamed Scarecrow and The Rat by villagers, while berrying on the side of a mountain.  The soldiers were forcing her Jewish neighbor Mr. Meier, to walk at gunpoint despite his being injured and bleeding.  Feeling threatened by Odin's growling, Scarecrow tells Mari she will get both of them shot if she can't control her dog.

Mari is the youngest of three children and her family has always treated her in a babyish way, but now things are changing and Mari must change with them.  The Nazis have outlawed radios, news sources, even their traditional Norwegian dress; their king has fled to England and the government is being run by a Nazi puppet named Quisling.  It is suddenly a whole different world, but at least Mari has her constant companion Odin.  Only now, Odin has two enemies and they carry guns.

When Mari goes back to school in September, she is told not to trust anyone, one just doesn't know who has sided with the Nazis and who hasn't.  And when older sister Lise comes home from University in Oslo for a visit, she announces that she and her boyfriend will be married sooner than planned.  The reason - life is unsafe for unmarried Norwegian girls around the Nazis.

But the biggest surprise for Mari is discovering who is part of the Resistance, who isn't and which citizens are doing their bit to sabotage the Nazis in Ytre Arna whenever they can.  And it doesn't take long before Mari, like the rest of her family, even her grandmother, finds herself involved in these clandestine activities as well.  But is the price she pays for it just too much?

Odin's Promise is a real coming of age story.  At first, Mari is a shy, quiet girl who frightens easily, but the reader can see how the circumstances she finds herself in enable her to find the courage and strength to grow and to do what needs to be done, even in the face of overwhelming threat on the part of young impulsive Nazi soldiers.

Red Hats worn by Norwegian
Children
From: The Paperclip Campaign

Resistance stories are among my favorite kind of WWII narratives.  While I like the stories of hidden organized armed resisters, I really like to read about the ordinary citizens who loved their country so much that they not only refused to support the occupation, but actively did what they could to make thing more difficult, or even to just annoy their occupiers.  Mari, her friends and school children all over Norway wore red hats every day to show their loyalty to Norway, and to irritate the Germans.  Norwegians are very patriotic,  and were very loyal to King Haakon VII after he escaped the Nazis and that really comes across in Sandy Brehl's debut novel about Mari and her family.

There is lots of Norwegian culture included in Odin's Promise, particularly around the wedding of Mari's sister Lise, where outright defiance of Nazi orders was the real order of the day.  And be sure to read the Author's Note at the end of the novel to learn all about how Sandy came up with some of the ideas for Odin's Promise that give it such a feeling of authenticity.  And remember, there is a glossary included in the back matter that will help with both Norwegian and German words used.  And, just in case Sandy has peaked your curiosity about Norway and the Resistance in WWII, she has provided at very nice bibliography, including other middle grade novels about set in the same time with similar themes.

Odin's Promise is a well written, very well researched novel and will be available on May 17, 2014.  But you can read an excerpt on Sandy's website HERE

Or, if you would like to have your own personalized copy of Odin's Promise, just leave a comment and I will be choosing a winner used Random.org   Please provide a valid email in your comment so I can contact the winner.  You will have until May 6, 2014 to enter the giveaway.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was sent to me by the author

Odin's Promise is on tour at the following blogs:

April 21 - Erik at The Kid Reviews Books
April 24 - Rochelle Melander at the Write Now! Coach
April 28 - Suzanne Warr at Tales from the Raven
April 29 - Alex Baugh at The Children's War
April 30 - Margo Tanenbaum at The Fourth Musketeer
May 1    - Heidi Grange at Geo Librarian

FYI: Mention is made of the sign used by Norwegians to show solidarity and support for Norway and their exiled King Haakon VII.  The sign consists of the king's monogram and Churchill's V for victory:

This is book 2 of my 2014 European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader

Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust by Loïc Dauvillier, illustrated by Marc Lizano

When Elsa, 6, discovers her grandmother, Dounia Cohen, crying one night, the little girl convinces her to talk about what's causing her tears.  And so, her grandma begins telling her about her own life when she was Elsa's age living in Paris.

Her best friend was Catherine and they both had a crush on Isaac, and all three went to the same school.  One day, when Dounia came home from school, her father was already there.  He told Dounia there were to become a family of sheriffs and soon a yellow star was sewn onto her clothes.  The next day, Isaac didn't show up for school and Dounia was told to sit in the back of the room, and learned that her star was meant to mark her as Jewish, not a sheriff.

When the police show up at the door one night, Dounia's parents put her into a hiding place and tell her to quietly wait for someone to come and get her.  When her neighbor comes, Dounia learns that her parents had been taken away, and the apartment ransacked.

The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Péricard, take care of Dounia in secret as long as they can, but eventually they learn that the police are planning a surprise visit to find her.  Dounia's name is changed to Simone Pierret, but before they can get away, someone spots Dounia.  She and Mrs. Péricard make it to the prearranged point for Dounia to be picked up and moved, but now Mrs. Péricard is also in danger and has no idea what happened to her husband.  The two are taken to the farm of an older woman named Germaine by Resistance workers.  Dounia had been told she must think of the Péricards as her parents, and now as Simone, she also becomes a young Catholic girl in order to keep her safe and hidden from the Nazis.

Dounia and Mrs. Péricard remain on the farm for the rest of the war, each wondering what became of their loved ones.

Hidden is the powerful story of a young girl who doesn't completely understand what is happening around her, why people suddenly dislike her and all other Jews so much and, most importantly, the sudden disappearance of so many people including her parents,   How does one deal with this?  Clearly, it took Dounia years to do that, since even her own son didn't know about his mother's experiences in Nazi occupation of France.

How does a young reader who is hearing about the Holocaust for possibly the first time deal with such a disturbing subject?  Clearly, a book about the Holocaust for kids, whether it is a graphic or traditional picture book, requires a very fine balance between story, information, and illustrations so that the story gives just the right amount of age appropriate information, but not so much that you frighten kids.  Hidden is a book that is so powerful in its simplicity, to honest in it telling that it definitely achieves this fine balance.

The translation by Alexis Siegel from the original French into English contains no ambiguities, and the dialogue flows comfortably and naturally.  I seem to be reading graphic novels about World War II and the Holocaust more and more lately, and they seem to be getting better and better.  The illustrations by Marc Lizano are reminiscent of a child's drawing, though the background is more sophisticated.  Still, the faces, even in their simplicity, really manage to convey a wide range of emotions - fear, sadness, anger, kindness, hate, love and ultimately even hope.  And the colorist, Greg Salsedo, really gives the illustrations a sense of the time, place and mood using his color palette.

Dounia's story is similar to that of many children in France.  In fact, in the Afterword, Hellen Kaufmann, president of the AJPN (Association Anonymes, Justes et Persecutés pendant la période nazie) writes that 84% of Jewish children living in France before the war survived because of people like Mrs. Péricard and Germaine and the Resistance workers who found safe homes for them were willing to risk their own lives to hide and protect these children from the Nazis and the collaborating French police.

This book is recommended for readers age 6+
This book was purchased for my personal library

On the Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck

You can't go wrong when you chose a book by Richard Peck to read and On the Wings of Heroes is not exception.  This gentle home front story takes place in middle America, in a family like so many others at that time.

Before the war, narrator Davy Bowman tells us, it was always summer, except when it was Halloween or Christmas.  Summer meant exciting games of Hide and Seek with all the kids, including his big brother Bill and his dad, Earl, the biggest kid on the block.  Halloween 1941, Davy is a cub scout who thinks he and his best friend Scooter could get one more year of trick or treating in before they were too old for it, and before the war took away all sweet treats.  And that Christmas, Davy and Scooter both hope against hope to get the new shiny two tone cream and crimson Schwinn bike in the window of Black's Hardware.  But then, Pearl Harbor is bombed and life changes for everyone.

School is now overcrowded with "Eight-to-Five Orphans," new kids from other places whose mothers are working in factories so no one is home during the day.  Air raid drills are the order of the day, in case of an attack; scrape is being collected by all the kids;  dimes are brought in to school once a week to buy war bonds; and Victory Gardens are dug and tended everywhere.

And Davy's hero, big brother Bill, joins the Army Air Corps, causing his family to live a constant state of pride, fear and anxiety, which becomes unbearable fear when they receive the news that Bill went missing in action while flying a B-17 over the English Channel.

As Davy takes us through life during the war, he recounts episodes with class bullies, three of the girls who are part of the Eight-to-Five Orphans; a little extortion ring collecting their dime protection money each week when it is time to buy bonds,; an old lady who has a genuine Pan American car in her garage that Davy and Scooter discover during a scrap collection excursion and who holds an even greater surprise for them than the buckshot she fires when she discovers them in her garage; and the old lady who hordes everything, including every newspaper she has ever received.  All these eccentric characters are given their own background story, including families created by Peck with a kind of depth and charming believability, so they become more than just plot devices.

On the Wings of Heroes is an historical fiction novel that will give you a sense of the war from the perspective of a preteen boy and will leave you with a warm feeling of family and community, of love and support.  Ironically, some of Peck's descriptions of neighborhood life, such as Halloween or playing Hide and Seek, are not so very different from my own memories of those things many years later, providing a comforting kind to timelessness that connects people through time and space.

On the Wings of Heroes is a serious, entertaining and thought-provoking novel.  Peck writes, even about war, with lots of humor, and I dare say, experience, since he would have grown up during WWII, just as Davy does and giving the novel a real sense of authenticity.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was purchased for my personal library

The Color of LIght by Helen Maryles Shankman

It is 1992 and postmodernism is the dominent art movement of the moment.  Rafe Sinclair, founder of The American Academy of Classical Art in New York City, is a classicist through and through, but now he is facing grumblings from some of his board member who think other art forms should be introduced, a board that wouldn't mind removing Rafe as head of the Academy.

But his Board isn't the only problem Rafe has.  First, Rafe is a vampire and is trying desperatgely to hold on to his sense of humanity even as he is forced to kill in order to live.  Second, Rafe was an art student in the 1930.  He had met and fallen in love with a young Jewish woman, a fellow artist, just before World War II began, and he is still in love with her, although he believes she had perished in the Holocaust.

Tessa Moss is a young art student at the Academy, talented but naive and involved in an unhealthy relationship with another artist, the very narcissistic Lucian Swain.  Rafe never really noticed Tessa's work until one day when he notices a sketch she has done of a woman with a child by a suitcase that has the name Witzotsky written on it.  The woman is covering the eyes of the child with her hand.  Rafe begins to take a special interest in Tessa and her work.

Witzotsky is a familiar name to Rafe and it turns out that Tessa has sketched a picture depicting a relative of hers named Sofia Witzotsky.  And, in fact, Sofia is the very same woman that Rafe was involved with, the same woman he thought he had lost in the Holocaust.  Or had he?  After all, he never really knew what Sofia's fate had actually been?  Before long, Tessa and Rafe are involved with each other, which is against school rules and just the kind of infraction the board could use to remove Rafe from his position as head of the Academy.  But if Tessa can help Rafe discover what really happened to Sofia, maybe it was worth the risk.

Helen Mayles Shankman has written a long, complicated book encompassing two time periods, and a fair amount of different characters.  It is very well written, engaging, compelling and I actually enjoyed the intricacies of the plot twists and turns.  Rafe and Tessa are believable (well, except for the vampire part), well defined, likable characters, each carrying a lot of baggage that goes back to the Holocaust: Rafe may have lost the love of his life, and Tessa has lost one whole family line on her father's side.

The Color of Light is a novel that will definitely please your romantic sensibilities, and your penchant for historical fiction and has all the elements of a good mystery novel all in one long (574 pages) story.   Shankman has a MFA in painting, so her art/artistic descriptions are pretty spot on and you will have no trouble picturing works of art that don't really exist.

My vampire fan days are long behind me and vampires are certainly not something I expected to read about when I started this blog.  And yet, I have certainly read my share of fantasy and science fiction here, so why not vampires?  But the fact that  Rafe Sinclair is a vampire is only a plot device allowing the narrative its dual time frame with him in both time periods as a man his age and it worked.

And generally the YA/Adult books I review here are of the cozy type, but variety is the spice of life and The Color of Life is a spicy novel that could be classified as New Adult/Adult.  What I mean is that it has more sexual content than most of the YA/Adult I review.

My friend Zohar over at Man of La Book recommended The Color of Light to me and I am so glad he did.  And I am paying it forward.

This book is recommended for mature readers age 15+
This book was sent to me by the author

A Reading Group Guide for The Color of Light is available HERE

It's National Bookmobile Day: Bookmobiles in WWII

Yesterday, I went to the library to pick up some books that they had gotten for me through interlibrary loan.  I have always been fortunate enough to live within walking distance of a public library and a short subway ride to one of the greatest research libraries in the country, the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.  And since it is National Library Week, I would like to give a shout out to my local library and the librarians who have gotten me many of the books I have used for this blog, as well as my other blog, Randomly Reading:

It may be National Library Week all week long, but April 16th is National Bookmobile Day.  

Bookmobiles have played an important part in providing library services to people to can get to their local library, or in areas that are too rural for a library to be built.  During World War II, bookmobiles helped bring books to factories, where workers who had little enough free time could browse and check out books.

1943 Chicago Public Library Bookmobile (University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, University Archives

 And they played a major role bringing books to people in the armed forces, both here and abroad.

The 31st Division's Mobile Library at Camp Polk, Louisiana 1943

A small mobile library for soldiers stationed in the Middle East

And of course, they were there for schoolchildren and their parents

Two Bookmobiles serving New York City

1942 Bookmobile, Stamford CT

Today, there are just under 1,000 bookmobiles in the United States, still serving people in all different areas, the bustling cities to rural farms.  And then there is the Camel Library Service in Kenya, the mobile library in Zimbabwe pulled by a donkey, an well as in Columbia, South America, in remote areas of Norway there is the book boat, Epos and in Thailand, the bookmobile is an elephant. (Wikipedia)

If you would like to know more about the history of bookmobiles, you might want to visit Orty Ortwein blog, Bookmobiles: A History

Here are some books that feature mobile libraries for young readers:
Picture Books:
Hannah's Bookmobile Christmas by Sally Derby
That Book Woman by Heather Henson
The Book Boat's In by Cynthia Cohen
Miss Dorothy and her Bookmobile by Gloria Houston
Wild About Books by Judy Sierra

Nonfiction:
Biblioburro: a true story from Columbia by Jeanette Winter
My Librarian is a Camel by Margaret Ruurs (nonfiction)
Down Cut Shin Creek: the pack horse librarians of Kentucky by Kathi Appelt and Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer (nonfiction)

Chapter Books:
Clara and the Bookwagon by Nancy Smiler Levinson
Mystery of the Bewitched Bookmobile by Florence Parry Heide and Roxanne Heide Pierce

YA/Adult:
Lending a Paw: a Bookmobile Cat Mystery by Laurie Cass
Taliling a Tabby: a Bookmobile Cat Mystery by Laurie Cass

Be sure to visit the ALA National Bookmobile Day 2014 for more resources and activities.  And you can download this nice PDF and put together your own bookmobile, like the one below:

Cardboard Bookmobile bringing books to the toy soldiers