Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams by Katherine Paterson

Jella was born in 1891 in Stuttgart, Germany, the eldest daughter of a Jewish couple, Josef and Flora Lehmann. Her father owned a men's clothing store. Jella and her two sisters attended an elite academy that had been founded almost a century earlier by Queen Katharina. After graduation, Jella attended a boarding school near Lausanne, Switzerland.  When her education was finished, Jella, who was an accomplished musician, dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. However, her father would not allow this. Besides her passion for music, Jella also loved books and so she opened a reading room for the children of immigrants who came to work in the tobacco factory in Stuttgart.

In 1913, Jella married Gustav Lepman who was fourteen years her senior. Gustav had been born in Germany to American parents who had moved to the country to manage a duvet factory in Feuerbach. Within a few years, Gustav was drafted into the German army during World War I. Jella and Gustave had two children, Anne-Marie in 1918 and Gunther in 1921.

In 1922, tragedy struck when Gustav died of a heart attack likely brought on by the trauma he experienced during the war. He was forty-five years old. His insurance policy of one hundred thousand Reichsmarks was almost worthless due to inflation in Germany. This meant that Jella, now a thirty-one year old widow need to work.

Jella found work as a journalist, becoming editor of the Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt (New Daily Paper), the first woman to edit the paper. She wrote about childrens' books and womens' issues. During this time, Jella became politically active, joining the German Democratic Party, becoming a leader in the women's section. She ran for a seat in the 1930 elections to the Reichstag. At this time Germany was in economic and political chaos, fearful of the threat from Russian communism. They blamed their Jewish citizens for the situation. A world wide depression made this situation even worse.

The leader of the National Socialist Party (the Nazi party) was Adolf Hitler. He promised the German people he would restore their country by establishing law and order, and ridding the country of communists and Jews. In 1933, Hitler, with the support of the German people and the industrialists, rose to power and began to enact his policies. Jella who was Jewish, lost her job. Eventually, in 1936 as the situation in Germany became increasingly dangerous, Jella and her children fled to Italy. However, Italy too was not safe as its leader, Benito Mussolini was aligned with Hitler. Fortunately an Italian friend found nineteen year old Anne-Marie a job in England, while Gunther was accepted into a boarding school there.  As a result Jella also emigrated to England.

She found work reviewing and cataloguing an Austrian Jewish novelist's literary papers, and worked as a journalist and editor for the BBC and the American Broadcasting Station in Europe. She also authored a book about women in Nazi Germany.

When the war was over in 1945, Jella and many other international journalists, including the women editors of American fashion magazines, were involved in publishing a new magazine. This magazine was called Frau and Welt (Women and World) and its purpose was to rehabilitate Europe so ruined by war.

Then Jella received a request to return to Germany to an "advisor on the cultural and educational needs of women and children". She would be working in the area of Germany that was occupied by the Allies, including the Americans. This was a startling request that shook Jella. However, she remembered the fear and loneliness she had witnessed in Jewish children of the Kindertransport.  She felt that German's children would need help to recover from the war. This was to become Jella's life work, rebuilding childrens' hearts and minds in Germany through books and art.

Discussion

Katherine Paterson, author of Newberry Medal winners, Bridge To Terabithia, and Jacob Have I Loved, has written an engaging account of the efforts of Jella Lepman to help a generation of children recover from the trauma of war. 

A tour by Jella through the Allied occupied zone revealed the total destruction of many cities she had once called home, cities such as Frankfurt and Stuttgart.  In addition she met German citizens, some of whom were deeply ashamed of their country's actions, like Professor Alfred Weber, and others like the porter at the Tagblatt Tower where Jella once worked who had acquiesced to the Nazi regime and published their propaganda. What profoundly touched her however, was the suffering of the children, many of whom were orphaned and lived on the street in gangs

Jella and her family had managed to escape the Holocaust and live in England during the war. In spite of the hatred shown by her by her own country, Jella now responded with compassion, especially towards Germany's children whom she believed were innocent and who were the key to a different future for Germany. Jella's empathy allowed her to see the effects of the war on the children. She believed that Germany's children "...will show the grown-ups the way to go forward." She believed one way to help Germany's children was using books as "nourishment for the soul." In Jella's mind, "...the first messengers of that peace will be these children's books..."  

Jella's determination and creative approach to this daunting task and any problems that she encountered are well portrayed. For example because so many German children's books were banned and destroyed by the Nazis, Jella needed to find books that would interest children and be suitable for an exhibition. Undaunted and with the backing of General McClure, Jella wrote letters to publishers in twenty countries pleading for picture books and art work by each country's children. The response was overwhelming and the International Exhibition of Children's Books opened on July 5, 1946. The exhibition was held in the repurposed Nazi museum known as Haus der Kunst (House of Art) in Munich. 

Jella was not content to just have an exhibition. She published paper copies of The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson, so that children could have their own copy to read. She also managed to convince Walt Disney to allow the showing of Snow White in Germany. The film had been released in 1937 but German children were not able to view the movie.  She had to overcome strong opposition in Germany and the United States to create an International Youth Library. Her lecture tour allowed her to meet with Eleanor Roosevelt who was very supportive of Jella's work but she also encountered prejudice against opening the children's library in Germany which had unleashed so much suffering on the world. Jella was up to the task of countering this by asking people to give Germany's children a chance. Amid the growing tensions between the United States and Soviet Russia, the International Youth Library opened in 1949 in Munich. Jella's efforts to foster peace through childrens books continued with the formation of IBBY or International Board on Books for Young People. She even travelled to the Middle East promoting the use of children's books as a way to foster peace.

Helping to portrayed Jella Lepman's work are the illustrations by Sally Deng, rendered in pencil and digitally coloured. Katherine Paterson has written an informative and engaging picture book about a woman who seems to be largely unknown today. But Jella Lepman showed the world what forgiveness, empathy and compassion can accomplish along with the power of books.

Book Details:

Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams by Katherine Paterson

San Francisco: Handprint Books    2025
105 pp.

My Brigadista Year by Katherine Paterson

The year is 1961 and thirteen-year-old Lora is determined to do her part in the Cuban revolution. Having ousted the U.S.-backed government of President Fulgencio Batista in 1959, the new government led by Fidel Castro has mandated that Cuba will become a fully literate nation. Everyone who can read and write is directed to teach those who cannot.

Lora is determined to enlist, after seeing a poster in her high school but she needs the signature of her father and he is opposed to her participation. However, with the help of her modern thinking abuela, eventually her father relents and signs the papers. So Lora sets out, leaving behind her stricken parents, her beloved abuela and her two younger brothers, Silvio and Roberto. After writing her exams, Lora and the other students from her school travel to the Varadero training camp. Arriving at Varadero Beach,formerly a resort for wealthy tourists, Lora is stunned by its beauty.

Lora is to become part of the new Conrado Benitez Brigade, named after a young black literacy teacher murdered in the Escambray Mountains. She, along with the thousands of other young people are put in luxurious hotel rooms set up as dorms. When she first arrives, Lora meets Marissa who was a university student in Havana. Besides learning how to teach literacy, Lora and the others are taught basic first aid, and given lectures on agriculture. They will be not only teaching but working alongside the farmers and their families too.

Lora's training is interrupted when the United States launches an invasion in the Bay of Pigs. Many of the teachers and other leaders leave to join the battle and Lora's father soon arrives to take her home. But Lora courageously refuses telling him it would be like a soldier deserting. Eventually the Bay of Pigs invasion is over. Lora finishes her training and receives her uniform and the equipment of a brigadista.

In April of 1961, Lora along with thirty other brigadistas take a bus south and then travel into the Escambray mountains in the back of a truck. They are dropped off in the middle of the forest where they meet up with Esteban their commander and his assistant Lillian, both accompanied by a soldier. Lora and the others, ten boys and twenty girls,are taken to their base camp. There they are divided into neighbourhood teams; Lora's team includes Juan and Maria. In their orientation, they are told to write their parents and keep a journal of their successes and failures.

Eventually Lora travels to meet her new family, Luis and Veronica Santana and their three children, Rafael, Emilia and Isabel. While Lora will be living with them, she will also attempt to teach the neighbouring Acosta family, comprised of an elderly couple and their son Daniel and his wife Nancy. At first the Acosta men are resistant to learning but Lora meets each challenge with grace and determination winning life long friends and succeeding in her mission.

Discussion

My Brigadista Year focuses on the beginning period of the Cuban revolution, and is told from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old girl, spanning the years from 1958 to 1961. It carefully skirts the abuses of the Cuban revolution while highlighting the camaraderie of the Cuban people newly freed from the brutal Batista regime.Ironically the same abuses and violence committed by rebels hoping to defeat Castro and that Lora expresses horror over will be used by Castro to cement his control over Cuba.

Young readers will not find My Brigadista Year to be a realistic representation of life under the communist government led by Fidel Castro. In her Author's Note at the back, Paterson admits that her novel "is by no means meant to be a full or balanced account of all events occurring in Cuba in the year 1961. Fidel Castro committed many evils against his enemies, some of whom originally fought on his side for freedom from Batista but felt betrayed by actions of the new government when small farms were seized and innocent families relocated or put in camps. From 1959 until his death, Castro presided over a repressive regime, jailing and executing political opponents and sometimes even those considered allies, and denying ordinary Cuban citizens freedoms we Americans take for granted."

However, few children will likely read the Author's Note nor is it likely that teachers will read it to students either. So young readers will be left with the impression that the Cuban revolution was a necessary and positive development for Cuba and that young people were eager to join the brigadistas.The revolution occurs without much context as the focus is on one teenage girl who is not witness to the many abuses that occurred. For example, Lora only briefly mentions the closing of all religious schools and the conversion of them into national secular schools.

Thus, Lora is a highly idealized character, keen to do her part.  Lora's courage and dedication to both her mission and the families she is serving are uplifting. She is genuinely concerned for the families and forms a life-long bond with them. Her time in the mountains, helps her to understand the poor and eventually leads her to become a doctor. But as Paterson notes, "...the literacy campaign was not entirely staffed by idealistic volunteers like Lora. I understand that some families felt the pressure of potential reprisal for non-cooperation, and therefore, some young people might well have felt forced to join the campaign. As the year went on and the goal remained distant, schools were closed and teachers were also conscripted."

As Paterson shows in My Brigadista Year, the program also functioned to indoctrinate illiterate, rural families in socialist and communist ideals. Reading material was mostly government propaganda and not classics or primers designed to simply teach reading and comprehension skills. For example, Lora mentions that the first image in the primer is of men connected to the OEA, the Organization of American States. The letters were to be used to not only teach vowels but also to explain how the United States was working to make sure "our revolution would fail."

Interestingly, My Brigadista Year subtly reveals Lora's biases. When Lora wanted to attend an expensive high school in Havana, she had to decide whether to keep her abuela's beautiful heirloom gold earrings or sell them to "some arrogant, rich North American tourist". While it's unfortunate that she would have had to sell such a family treasure in order to attend a good school, her view of  all tourists as arrogant seems, at the very least, unfair. Has Lora met many American tourists or is this just what she's been told? It may be that tourists to Cuba in the 1950's were arrogant but they also brought much needed money into the Cuban economy. And many people all over the world make extreme sacrifices far greater than selling a pair of earrings, to attend school.

The same can be said of Lora's view of nuns whom she seems to particularly dislike. In a flashback to her beginning high school Lora notes, "Many of the nuns who taught us had degrees from England and Europe.Our French maestra had a degree from the Sorbonne University, in Paris, and the Sister who taught English had graduated from Oxford University, in England. They were scholars, and, if I may say so, not as humble as you might imagine a nun to be." Lora describes the nuns clothing as "dressed head to toe in medieval habits."  Paterson employs a trope common in literature, that of the mean, heartless nun. In this novel, the messages are clear: rich people are arrogant and religious people are uncaring, old fashioned and lacking in humility. Perhaps in light of current events, these are today's "acceptable biases"?

My Brigadista Year interestingly does mention the prejudice that exists in Cuba and many countries regarding skin colour. Lora has a new friend, Norma whose dark skin indicates her possible African heritage. Lora notes that her mother likely would not approve of her dark-skinned friend and she is certain that Norma experienced prejudice from their classmates based on the colour of her skin. Lora herself experiences this prejudice when she returns home from her brigadista assignment and is deeply tanned, noting that her mother refrained from making any comments until much later.

Paterson's Epilogue, where Lora as an adult describes her life in very positive terms, encourages young readers not to judge her country. "My country is not perfect, but then is yours?" The question seems to suggest that communism is simply another form of government with good and bad points. But is it? History from the 20th century shows that this has not been the experience of anyone living under communist rule.

Book Details:

My Brigadista Year by Katherine Paterson
Somerville, Mass.     2017
198 pp.