From: Christine Hill <chill>
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 20:03:39 -0500

Our recent discussion having made me hyper-alert to point of view, I was startled when Lobel shifted out of her carefully constructed child POV in the Ravensbruck camp, just prior to liberation. It was to note that extreme hunger had stripped her of all her other emotions and that she no longer missed those she loved. It was clearly the adult looking back at her experience and analyzing it, not the child's observation. I wonder why she did so, this being the only point in the book where I saw it occur. Was it too important to let pass, even though the child did not perceive it? The other thing that struck me about this fine book was the way, after so many years of powerlessness as she was shunted from place to place for safe-keeping, she seemed so proud of taking control, just for an instant, at Ravensbruck, to push her brother into the line "away from the chimneys." She knew she had made the right decision.

Christine M. Hill Willingboro Public Library One Salem Road Willingboro, NJ 08046 chilll at willingboro.org

Deborah Hopkinson wrote:

's Small Steps, too.) There were some letters to the editor n this or last week's New Yorker, commenting on a review of Life is Beautiful, in which the writers shared personal stories of having been hidden as children in concentration camps and made the point that we can almost never generalize. And it strikes me that though we have stories of the war, there are still so many more stories that need to be told. I'm so glad Anita Lobel told hers.
Received on Thu 01 Apr 1999 07:03:39 PM CST