Anastasia, Czarina or Fake?

This book, written by Leslie McGuire, is part of a series called the “Great Mysteries” series, which attempts to provide opposing points of view on controversial events and phenomena. It is a biography of Anastasia, Czarina of Russia. I chose this book because I have always been intrigued by the Russian royal families; I loved the movie “Anastasia”. The book tells the story of Anastasia and her family, chronicling what is known and what isn’t about their disappearance. It follows the story of a woman, Anna Manahan, who claimed that she was Anastasia. She was found in a canal in Germany, badly injured and without much of her memory. An already difficult journey to finding her identity was made even more difficult by the fact that she refused to cooperate with authorities and even members of her supposed family.

The book presents evidence that there may or may not have been a murder of the entire family, or just a few family members. Where did this murder occur? Did any of the family members escape, like Anastasia herself? Was the woman who presented herself as Anastasia really Anastasia? If not, who was she? These are just a few of the questions this book raises and provides evidence for.

The book had so many great photographs, but the one thing I wish was different about it was that I wish the pictures had been in color. I know that this isn’t always possible due to monetary issues, but it would have been nice had there been color. The photographs that I thought were the most helpful were the ones comparing known photographs of Anastasia to the woman claiming to be her. It was really interesting to compare the two women for myself and to see what the authorities were talking about when they were referencing photographs of the two women.

This book is great to use in a classroom when teaching about different perspectives and points of view. It encourages readers to take evidence and draw their own conclusions. There are quotes in the margins of many of the pages that present different points of view. For example, two quotes are “[Anastasia Tschaikovsky] is an absolute fraud” and “Well, it is Anastasia” (23). While the author never provides strong evidence for both sides, no conclusion is ever reached. This bothered me to some extent because I wish that the book had definite closure, but it’s good because it allows the reader to think for him or herself. Additionally, this book would be an excellent starting point for students who are just starting to research Russian history or royal families. It really piqued my interest in Russian history, and I would love to read more books about the period in time or about Anastasia and the other members of the royal family.

Nelson Mandela

I enjoyed reading Reggie Finlayson’s biography of Nelson Mandela, simply entitled Nelson Mandela. It told Mandela’s life story, from a boy in rural South Africa to a man dedicated to the South African fight for freedom and equal rights for everyone. It didn’t go through all of his life, instead highlighting important points and throwing in some interesting stories. I found the book to be entertaining, which was good since I started off with no previous knowledge of Nelson Mandela.

The book had some really great pictures! Some of them are really old, like one of the first ones, which depicts a nineteenth-century chief and his wives, while others are newer. The pictures are great because they allow students to visualize the people and country about which they are reading. Because I have very little prior knowledge about Africa or the African people, the pictures made the book more interesting. I wish there had been more pictures, or even maps. The author also included a great deal of first-hand sources, like excerpts from speeches and writing from leaders of the time. That was helpful because it really put everything they were fighting for into perspective.

One thing I didn’t like about this book was that the pronunciation guide was at the very end of the book. At first I thought there wasn’t one at all, and I didn’t realize there was one until I had finished the entire book. Maybe if I had been a better reader I would have discovered it, but I don’t think the average young reader would realize this either. There were so many African words and names, like Xhosa, Rolihlahla, and Mphakanyiswa, but I had no idea how to say them. This would have been especially problematic if I were reading the book to a group of students or otherwise using it for instructional purposes. The reader should be given some sort of clue that there is a pronunciation guide at the end of the book.

Additionally, I wish that the author had chosen to include background information about where he found his information on Nelson Mandela. I would love to know what his interest in South Africa and Nelson Mandela is. How did he find this information? Has he ever been to South Africa? In summary, this is a good book for kids to read on their own time to learn about Africa and an influential African man, but it might not be too useful to use in a classroom setting.

Seedfolks

Seedfolks, written by Paul Fleischman, was such a quick read! It tells the story of different people in a community planting a garden. The book is made up of short stories, each told from a different perspective. The different perspectives were the thing I enjoyed the most about this book. As I read, I recognized certain details mentioned in one story that I related back to another person’s story.

Another of my favorite aspects of the book is the pictures that relate to the text. At the beginning of each of the stories is a picture of the person whose perspective the story is coming from. Each person is different, just like the stories. Whenever I read, I like to visualize the person telling the story, so it was neat that I was provided with a picture of the person. There was also another picture on the first page of each story that related to the story. I didn’t notice this until near the end of the book, but the pictures are of vegetables the people grow, or something that they bring to the garden.

The first two stories go together really well. In the first one, a little girl is planting lima beans in the garden, and in the next story, an elderly lady sees her doing this and thinks she’s up to no good. This is a misunderstanding, just like what happens everyday between the different cultures and people in the community. This was a great metaphor to start the book out with.

One of the stories that I got the most meaning out of was Gonzalo’s story, which talks about the difficulties people have when they come to the U.S. and can’t speak English. I am doing an independent study on bilingualism and the problems facing students in the U.S. educational system who do not speak English, so I have been thinking a lot about the things Gonzalo talked about. I loved seeing his grandfather, who spoke only an Indian language, transition from a ‘baby’, when he wanders around aimlessly, to a man, when he plants his seeds in the garden.

Another story I liked was Sae Young’s. She is a Korean woman who uses the garden as a way to come back out into the community and be with people again after a bad experience. I thought it was really interesting that her story was written in short, choppy sentences, much like I can imagine a Korean immigrant who knows only a little English would speak. This one seems to be the only story written in quite this way. I wonder why?

Because it was a collection of short stories, I was reminded of Rylant’s Van Gogh Café. I thought this was a better book than the other because all of the stories are connected to each other. I was able to recognize other community members from other people’s stories, and I was able to recognize the same events from different perspectives. Although I enjoyed this book better, I wonder if maybe children would enjoy Rylant’s book more.

The Devil’s Arithmetic

Jane Yolen’s book, The Devil’s Arithmetic, is a time-warp fantasy story. It was mentioned in the last chapter on fantasy and science fiction books, and I thought it was something I might find interesting. I really enjoy historical fiction books, and this book seemed like a great way to read a book that was an overall fantasy (and get to check it off as a fantasy story on my grid!) but that appealed to my love of history. It was a great choice!

The book starts out in the present with thirteen year-old Hannah and her family celebrating the Passover Seder. Her family keeps telling her that all of the rituals are to remember, but she doesn’t understand what they mean by that and why it is so important. When she is chosen to open the door so that the prophet Elijah, instead of seeing the hall outside of the door, she has been transported to a house looking out into a field. She’s not sure where she is, but she is sure that it is some kind of cruel joke or dream. She comes to find out that she is a Jewish girl named Chaya living in a village in Poland. She and her new family, along with the rest of her village, are stopped by the Nazis on their way to a wedding, and packed into cars and sent to a concentration camp. There they are forced to work and some of the others die or are killed. Chaya is not chosen to die, but trades places with another girl who is. It is at this time that she is transported back to the present, where she learns that some of the people she met in the story are her family members.

Yolen provides an Epilogue with useful background for readers not familiar with the events of with Judaism. She talks about which details in the story are true, and which were made up. The Epilogue helps readers to tie everything together.

It was interesting to see this period of time from a different point of view. I remember reading a lot of books about World War Two and the Holocaust when I was younger (Molly was my favorite American Girl doll), and whenever I learned about the Holocaust, I always wondered why the Jews didn’t try to escape, why they didn’t try to do something. This book did a wonderful job of juxtaposing Hannah, who starts out with a lot of the same questions and suggestions as I have, with all of the other Jews. Hannah starts out trying to warn everyone about the ovens and the killing and six million Jews dead, but her aunt Gitl warns her not to scare people. In the cattle cars on the way to the camp, Hannah yells in exasperation, “we must do something. And quickly. I know where they’re taking us….I am…I am…from the future” (78). The Rabbi quickly disregards what she’s saying and tells everyone that all they can do is pray. There are multiple times in the book when Hannah suggests they run away or fight back, but other prisoners present reasons for why that is not feasible. Hannah seems to represent what people during the future think when they think back on the events. Her aunt Gitl often has to explain to her how the Jews felt during the events—why they complied and why they didn’t fight back. It’s always important to remember that hindsight is 20:20. As Hannah starts to lose her memories from the future and become more and more Chaya and less Hannah, she starts to think like the other people in the camp. “She thought what her knowledge of the ovens, of the brutal guards, of names like Auschwitz and Dachau could really do for them here, naked and weaponless, except to take away that moment by moment of hope” (91). It is here that she really begins to understand and think like the others. By the end of the book, the reader really begins to understood why the people in the camp did what they did. The girl Rivka, who helps Hannah and her friends in the camp, says that there must be some reason God is letting this tragedy happen. There was so much hope in her statement that I had never really thought about before. It was such a new way to think about the events, and it was interesting to see the ways in which they tried to comfort themselves.

Two main themes in this book are remembering and words. The whole reason Hannah is transported to 1942 is because she doesn’t understand what her grandfather and family are telling her when they tell her that the Seder is about remembering. She has to go through the events in order to remember. As she starts experiencing what others went through, she begins forgetting about her old life in America. Only at the end does she begin to remember her life as Hannah. Remembering keeps coming up again and again in the story. When her aunt Gitl tells Hannah that she is part of a plan to escape, Gitl says “Promise me, Chaya, you will remember” (144). She is promising that she will remember not to tell anyone about the plan, but this is also related to the bigger picture—she must remember what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust.

Words also play a huge role in the book. Euphemisms are used in the camp much like they are used in The Giver for dying. Materials are organized, instead of stolen; people are chosen for processing, instead of chosen to be killed. Yolen shows how words can be used for a variety of purposes. Words have power, like when Hannah is scolded for telling the villagers what the Nazis will do to the Jews (“How can you talk like that? Your words will fly up to Heaven and call down the Angel of Death, Lilith’s bridegroom, with his poisoned sword” [66]). Words can kill, like when one of the soldiers says that he will kill the next person who speaks (75). Words in the prayers are also a great comfort when they are in the camp; they pray when people die and when they are afraid.

Missing May

Cynthia Rylant’s realistic fiction novel Missing May was the recipient of the Newberry Medal in 1993. It tells the story of a girl, Summer, who was taken in by an older couple, May and Ob. May dies six years after Summer has been living with her and Ob. Following her death, Summer and Ob never truly grieved. One day Ob thinks that May’s spirit has visited him, and he, Summer, and their friend Cletus set out to communicate with her spirit. They try to talk to her themselves and then travel to a Spiritual Church to have someone mediate the communication. When this doesn’t work out, Summer is finally able to grieve and she and Ob are able to go on with their lives.

While I have liked most of the other Cynthia Rylant books I have read so far, I wasn’t able to get into this book right away. It seemed a little slow and confusing at first. I was confused as to who Ob and May were and what their relation to Summer was. It was not until the end of the book, when Ob, Summer, and Cletus go to the Spiritual Church to try to communicate with May that I really became interested in the characters and what was going on.

There were so many passages in this book that broke my heart. For example when Summer is describing all of the wonders she sees in May’s house, she thinks “Those little cardboard boxes of juice that I had always, just once, wanted to try….And, best of all, a carton of real chocolate milk that said Hershey’s.” (8) These are such simple things, and it struck me as sweet that this is what Summer wants. I loved the passage when Ob was describing the little things that May did, like “how she had rubbed down his ailing knee with Ben-Gay every single night, not missing a one, so he might be able to stand on that leg when he got out of bed the next morning” (35). While the book mentions larger things she did, I love that simple things like this are what Ob chose to tell Summer and Cletus about.

I was able to make some connections between this book and others that I have read. First of all, Summer says that during the ride to the Spiritual Church, the mood “was almost sadness, but it wasn’t. It was sweeter than sadness” (68). This quote reminds me of the candy in Because of Winn-Dixie that is like a mixture of sweetness and sadness too. On second thought, a lot about this book reminds me of Because of Winn-Dixie. Both books are about young girls who have lost people they love and how they come to terms with that loss. Through Winn-Dixie, Opal is able to make sense of her loss. Summer is able to do this through seeing Ob grieve and then being able to grieve herself. This book also reminded me of Rylant’s Appalachia. In both books, she talks about how that region is more than just coal mines and other broken-down things like that. In fact, there is a line in this book very similar to lines from Appalachia—“I felt in me an embarrassing sense of pride that she was ours. That we weren’t just shut-down old coal mines and people on welfare like the rest of the country wanted to believe we were” (70).

Ella Enchanted

Ella Enchanted, a Newberry Honor book written by Gail Carson Levine, is a wonderful adaptation of the traditional Cinderella story. At birth, a fairy named Lucinda bestows the gift of obedience on Ella. She must obey any command she is given. Ella meets Prince Charmont when she is about fifteen years old, at her mother’s funeral. Ella is then sent off to finishing school with Dame Olga’s two awful daughters, Hattie and Olive. She runs away when she hears that her father and the fairy Lucinda will both be at a giant’s wedding. She goes with the hope of having Lucinda break her curse, but she is unsuccessful. Her father tells her that he has lost all of his money, so he will marry Dame Olga for her money. He travels a lot, and Ella is left at home to serve Olga and her daughters. Ella writes to Char, and he confesses his love for her. Because of her curse, she is reluctant to marry him. What if someone was to find out that she has to obey all commands and used it against her and the prince…or even worse, against her country? She goes to a series of three balls thrown by the royal family so that Char can find a bride. She dances with him at all three, masked. When he comes to her house to find her, he sees her in her rags from being forced to work as a servant. When she saves the prince by disobeying a command from Hattie to marry him, her curse is broken. They live happily ever after, of course.

What a great twist on the Cinderella story! I have been reading a lot of different versions of it for this class, but this is the first version I’ve read that isn’t a picture book. First of all, the obedience curse was an interesting development. Lucinda meant it as a gift, but I don’t see how it could ever be thought of as a blessing. What would it be like if you were forced to do everything you were told to do? At the end of the book, when her curse is broken, Ella is so happy to be able to make decisions for herself and to be able to say yes or no to something. I also loved the variations on the traditional names. Instead of being called Prince Charming, he is named Prince Charmont. The variation of the name also makes the prince seem a little more exotic. Instead of being called Cinderella, the main character is Eleanor (Ella for short).

As soon as Dame Olga and her two daughters were introduced, I recognized them as the evil stepmother and stepsisters. There were even glass slippers! I was a little surprised to see that detail in the story. It was a really neat addition. This story had three balls instead of the traditional one. Ella has two fairy godmothers in this story—Lucinda and the cook, Mandy. It seems easier to believe in fairies in this story since it takes place in a mythical kingdom where it is common to trade with the elves and see fairies at weddings. Ella goes to the balls in a pumpkin coach drawn by mouse-horses, a detail not seen in other versions. This Cinderella story is the closest I’ve read to the traditional story I am used to, as depicted by Disney.

The author uses such wonderful words in this book! She paints beautiful pictures with her words. Before Ella leaves for finishing school, she goes to the royal menagerie, where there are parrots who speak all of the world’s languages, a dragon, centaurs, and ogres. I could almost see all of these mythical creatures as they were being described. Ella’s favorite part was the parrots who speak various languages, and I love that idea too! The parrots can speak all of the human languages as well as mythical languages, like Gnomic and Elfian. The description of how Ella feels when Hattie finds out that she will do anything she’s told to do made me really empathize with her. This is something kids need to learn how to do, so I think it’s great that this book teaches them how to do that.

Although I loved the descriptions of the mythical creatures, like elves, giants, ogres, and centaurs, I really wish there had been more description of the humans living in the kingdom. Who exactly do Char and his family rule over?

I found some connections from this book to other non-Cinderella stories. First of all, at the beginning of the book Ella looks at a rug made by fairies. Although I later learned differently, this reminded me of Jonas’ ability to “see beyond” in The Giver. Really, since the rug was made by fairies, it has the ability to tell stories. Secondly, whenever Char and his knights go near ogres, they put wax in their ears so the ogres’ words won’t overpower and persuade them. This is like when Odysseus and his sailors do this whenever they go near the islands in the Odyssey.

This was a wonderful adaptation of the Cinderella story! It shared a lot of the same elements as other versions I’ve read, although it differed some as well. In this version, Ella rescues both Prince Char and herself from her obedience curse instead of him rescuing her.

Baba Yaga and the Little Girl

I chose to read Katya Arnold’s Baba Yaga and the Little Girl because I remember reading other stories about Baba Yaga when I was little. In this Russian folk tale, a little girl’s mother dies and her father remarries a mean woman. The woman sends the little girl to her sister’s house to ask for a needle and thread. Instead of going to her step-aunt’s house, the girl goes to her own aunt’s house to ask for advice. Her aunt tells her how to outsmart her step-aunt. She follows her aunt’s directions and outsmarts the woman, who turns out to be Baba Yaga, by turning her animals and servants against her. The little girl goes home and finds her father waiting for her, where he throws his wife out and the father and daughter live happily ever after.

This story is a conglomeration of different familiar fairy tales, such as Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel. Like Cinderella, the little girl’s mother dies and her father gets married to a mean woman who forces her to work. In this story, the girl’s own aunt is much like the fairy godmother. She gives the girl advice about how to outsmart her step-aunt and guides her. Also like in Cinderella, animals help her to outsmart Baba Yaga. Like in Hansel and Gretel, Baba Yaga plans cook and eat the little girl. It’s clear that Baba Yaga represents all of the evil characters in fairy and folk tales.

The one thing that really stands out about this book is its illustrations. They are all so scary! They lend a mood of danger to the story. Baba Yaga is depicted as larger-than-life as she looms over the little girl. The illustrations are all rough sketches, which makes me think of folk art. Perhaps this was done on purpose, to have the readers think about traditional Russian folk art while reading the story.

Parts of the book were a little difficult for me to follow, but perhaps that is because I am not very familiar with the character of Baba Yaga. I was initially confused about which aunt the little girl was going to visit, but I later realized that she was visiting her own mother or father’s sister instead of her step-mother’s sister. Additionally, I wish there had been some sort of author’s note explaining the background of the story. That would have allowed me to have a greater understanding of it.

The theme of this story seems to be similar to that of other folk and fairy tales—do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. For example, each of the people and animals and things that helped the little girl escape tells Baba Yaga that the little girl gave them something, and they all served Baba Yaga for years and got nothing in return.