From: Steven Engelfried <sengelfried>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:07:52 -0700

I'm not quite finished with it, but Jerry Spinelli's "Milkweed" introduces several varied communities, both from the dark side and the light. There's the loose community of orphan boys who survive the Warsaw ghetto partly by looking out for each other. There's the Jewish family Misha befriends, who make him orphan almost a part of their family. And there's the larger community of Warsaw itself, where things get worse and worse, but we only see it through the eyes of Misha, whose understanding of the world is very limited...sometimes to humorous effect, sometimes almost horrifyingly (he admires the Nazis for quite a while). And sometimes touchingly, as when he always gives half of what he steals to an orphanage outside the wall. Misha is one of the few who can actually be part of more than one community, which makes him important to those he encounters...and also a very interesting character.

- Steven Engelfried, Head of Youth Services
 Beaverton City Library
 12375 SW 5th Street
 Beaverton, OR 97005
 503R6%99
 sengelfried at ci.beaverton.or.us
Received on Tue 21 Oct 2003 02:07:52 PM CDT