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From: Ruth I. Gordon <druthgo>
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 21:32:27 -0800
Butterworth's Sea Horse: The Shyest Fish in the Sea (Candlewick) is an accurate, lively, and well illustrated presentation of a different critter.
Emil and Karl (Porter/Roaring Brook). With a fascinating publishing history, an unique book first published in 1940 in Yiddish in the United States, tells of two German boys in Nazi Germany as Hitler's Reich was tightening a noose around the lives of anyone who disagreed: Jews (Emil) and others (Karl) whose families actively disagreed with the Nazis. The two young boys, one Christian and one Jewish, are best friends and must fend for themselves after the loss of their parents with the help of some who risk their lives--and others who believe in Hitler's cause of world domination.
That such a book could appear in the same publishing year as Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a book that trivializes and totally understates the enormity (there is simply no word that conveys this inhumane horror) of the Holocaust and Auschwitz (never named in this trivializing of the Holocaust ((also not named)) ) is the publisher's sin for opting for profit over decency. Many have been taken in by Boyne's glib writing and too often reviews mention how the reader wept. My constant question--for whom did the reader weep? Bruno, the well fed and indulged son of the commandant of
"Outwith"=Auschwitz or the millions of people in striped pajamas-- Jews, Romas, politicals, others who disagreed with the "Fury" (the cute word for Hitler).
Big Grandma
Received on Sat 09 Dec 2006 11:32:27 PM CST
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 21:32:27 -0800
Butterworth's Sea Horse: The Shyest Fish in the Sea (Candlewick) is an accurate, lively, and well illustrated presentation of a different critter.
Emil and Karl (Porter/Roaring Brook). With a fascinating publishing history, an unique book first published in 1940 in Yiddish in the United States, tells of two German boys in Nazi Germany as Hitler's Reich was tightening a noose around the lives of anyone who disagreed: Jews (Emil) and others (Karl) whose families actively disagreed with the Nazis. The two young boys, one Christian and one Jewish, are best friends and must fend for themselves after the loss of their parents with the help of some who risk their lives--and others who believe in Hitler's cause of world domination.
That such a book could appear in the same publishing year as Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a book that trivializes and totally understates the enormity (there is simply no word that conveys this inhumane horror) of the Holocaust and Auschwitz (never named in this trivializing of the Holocaust ((also not named)) ) is the publisher's sin for opting for profit over decency. Many have been taken in by Boyne's glib writing and too often reviews mention how the reader wept. My constant question--for whom did the reader weep? Bruno, the well fed and indulged son of the commandant of
"Outwith"=Auschwitz or the millions of people in striped pajamas-- Jews, Romas, politicals, others who disagreed with the "Fury" (the cute word for Hitler).
Big Grandma
Received on Sat 09 Dec 2006 11:32:27 PM CST
