From: Levine, Arthur <ALevine>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:14:18 -0500

I'd like to jump right into the discussion of the book and ask what people thought of the narrative tone. The affect of the narrator is strikingly disengaged -- relating horrifying events in a fairly dispassionate voice. I vacillated between finding this off-putting, and thinking that it was a unique way of bringing across the shock and loss that this poor child experiences. Other questions came up for me about this strategy. For instance, it seemed to me that the author showed us many different ways in which Srulik/Jurek deliberately forgets his past life; it's the only way he can protect himself from giving himself away as a Jew. Yet I was puzzled why upon getting lost in the ghetto at the very beginning, he doesn't think once about the older brother, Duvid, who led them out of the ghetto just pages before. Or any of the other siblings that were in the ghetto with him. Is this to be taken as a sign that already, even before the events of the novel, the oppression of the Polish Jews was having a dire effect on this one boy? Or is it an authorial slip?

 Message----From: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
[mailto:ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu] Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 2:06 AM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: ccbc-net digest 24 Mar 2004


Topics covered in this issue include:

  1. 2004 Batchelder Award
       "Megan Schliesman"
       Tue, 23 Mar 2004 08:44:05 00
  2. Batchelder Award
       Norma Jean
       Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:56:08 00
  3. "Too foreign?"
       "Kathleen Horning"
       Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:20:02 00
  4. Batchelder Award
       Kay Weisman
       Tue, 23 Mar 2004 18:58:12 00
Received on Wed 24 Mar 2004 08:14:18 AM CST