My Real Name is Hanna by Tara Lynn Masih

My Real Name Is Hanna is the fictional account of a Ukrainian-Jewish family's struggles to survive the Holocaust. Fourteen-year-old Hanna Slivka lives in the village of Kwasova with her younger sister Leeba and her younger brother Symon and their parents Adam and Eva. Kwasova is a town comprised of Galicians from Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Hanna's family is part of the Jewish community, her family having moved to the town in 1927. As Jews they have lived side by side with farmers and townspeople, working together and even sharing the Ukrainian Community Hall with their them. But some Russians and Poles are not so tolerant of their Jewish neighbours. Often when walking home from the market, Hanna and her sister Leeba must deal with bullies.
 
Kwasova is part of Poland when Hitler invades the country on September 1, 1939. However, with the German invasion, the Russians race to occupy the eastern half of Poland. As a result, Kwasova becomes part of Soviet Russia with the arrival of the Red Army. Polish flags are replaced by the Soviet red flag with its sickle and hammer,  the Polish street signs are replaced with Russian ones and classes are taught in Russian.

However, things gradually begin to change for Hanna and her family and their Jewish community as well as for others in the town. Stalin forbids all public practice of religion so in April of 1940, the Jews must hide their preparations for Passover. The last Shepherd's Parade held in the shtetele happens in 1941, only because Hanna's father is able to convince the Russians to allow it.  Her father has considerable standing in both the Jewish and Ukrainian/Russian community. He is not only a sheepherder, but also is able to repair things for the Russians. This allows him to be on friendly terms with Commissar Egorov who is in charge of the NKVD officers stationed in Kwasova. Hanna's family live in the only brick house on the lane that leads to the meadows where the sheep graze. The only other dwelling on the lane is Mrs. Petrovich's thatched cottage. This older lady is a good friend of Hanna's family, hired as their Shabbes goy, doing work Hanna's parents cannot do on the Sabbath.

One night Hanna overhears the men talking downstairs. Visiting their home are the two Cohan twins Pavel and Jacob, Mr. Rabinowitz, and Mr. Stadnick who is Hanna's friend Leon's father. The Cohan brothers who are able to travel freely in the area and are the only source of information reveal that the war has come to their country now. The Ukrainians are welcoming the German army in the hopes that they will be free from the Russian occupation and will sponsor an independent Ukraine. The Red Army is fleeing, the NKVD has left. Gradually the Jewish community finds itself more and more isolated from Kwasovians.

In the winter of 1942, Hanna's family is drawn into sheltering refugees fleeing north from the Germans. When Hanna questions her father about their secret guests he tells her only that they have come from Romania and "are people like us." Hanna's father gives her a leather bound copy of Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.

In the spring, a Ukrainian farmer, Stepan Illiouk drops off two very young boys whom he helped on their journey north. While Hanna and her mother are attempting to figure out what to do, Mrs. Petrovich quietly deposits a basket of fresh chicken eggs on their doorstep. This means she has seen the two boys come to their home. Mrs. Petrovich makes pysanky eggs for her clients for Easter and Christmas which Hanna helps to deliver. It is now clear that Mrs. Petrovich is an ally. Hanna and her mother come up with a scheme, disguising the two boys as being injured in a farm accident. After dark, Hanna's papa escorts them to the house of the Ukrainian Catholic priest, Father Dubrowski, who is baptizing Jews and creating new birth certificates for them, in the hopes of saving them.

Eventually the refugees stop coming, the Wehrmacht soldiers advance into the valleys, followed by the Einsatzgruppen with their guns, dogs, gas vans and classical music. The borders are closed.  Life becomes much harsher for everyone but especially for Jewish families. Hanna still attends school although as the oldest pupil she just reads. However the Polish students are careful to sit far away from the Jewish students. Hanna's friend, Leon now attends a small private school in the town for the Jewish boys. The many shops in the market square close and there are long lines for what little food can be found. Because Hanna has blond hair she is sent to stand in line for the two ounces of bread their family is entitled to. In line, Hanna sees the poster warning people to avoid Jews in case of typhus. In a bold move Hanna manages to secure double their bread ration.

Gradually time begins running out for Hanna's family and the other Jewish families in Kwasova. The dreaded SS invade smaller rural towns and villages. In September they arrive Kwasova with a long line of Romanian Jews. They steal the horses and what little food remains in the town. Hanna's family watch from a hilltop outside of town waiting until the Germans move on. From the Cohan brothers, they learn the Germans massacred all the Jews marching with them, near the village of Borszczow, disguising the sound of machine gun fire with classical music played on a gramophone.

In Kwasova, the Jews are ordered to register and to wear a blue Mogen David or Star of David. However, Hanna's father forbids them from doing either, counting on their neighbours not to turn them in. The SS and the Ukrainian police are searching barns for hidden Jews whom they force into ghettos or murder. Hanna's Uncle Levi and her father dig underground bunkers to hide in during raids, while Hanna, her mother and sister will hide in an attic bunker. A pane of glass is removed from Hanna's bedroom window and the family takes turns listening at night for an unanticipated raid. That raid does happen and for two days Hanna and her family hide.

On an afternoon in the fall of 1942, the Germans force the closure of the schools for good, and the Ukrainian police steal Hanna's family's sheep to feed the Germans. On September 26, 1942, Mrs. Petrovich comes to Hanna's home bearing wooden crosses. She tells Hanna's father this evening, the Germans are coming through the town to forcibly remove all Jews to make it Judenfrei. Any home without a cross will be considered Jewish. Hanna's father takes the cross and brings one to his brother Levi. The night passes and Hanna's family and her cousins are safe. In the morning they learn what happened through the blackness of night from Stepan Illiouk. Many Jews were murdered in their beds, others were marched to a culvert near Stepan's fields and shot in groups while the Germans ate confiscated food and played classical music. Stepan is horrified that he now has a graveyard at the edge of his field.

Hanna and her family finally understand that this is no short-lived pogrom they they can survive but the systematic annihilation of every Jew. They set out to save themselves, not realizing just how much it will cost them and how much their lives will change forever.

Discussion

My Real Name Is Hanna is based somewhat on the real life story of Esther Stermer who saved the lives of her family and five other families by hiding in the gypsum caves in Eastern Ukraine during World War II. Esther and her husband Zaida lived in the small Ukrainian village of Korolowka, when it was invaded by the Germans in 1941. Determined to save her family, Esther and Zaida, along with five other families packed up some belongings and fled into the dark, cold night to the network of gypsum caves near their village. They were told about the caves by a forester in the District of Galicia. Thirty-eight persons would live in the caves for five hundred and eleven days, a record that still stands today, only emerging in when the Red Army had pushed the Germans out of the area in 1944. The families lived in a second cave which had good ventilation and lakes, creating areas to bath and digging latrines. Artifacts from their time in the caves were discovered in the 1990s by cave diver, Chris Nicola. Eventually he was able to discover the story behind the artifacts.

In Masih's novel, the characters are all fictional except for the historical figures of Adolf Hitler and Gestapo Chief Koelner. The author strove "...to be historically accurate in as many ways as possible." in spite of the fact that there were few personal accounts that survive, and the history of the region has been suppressed by both the Ukraine and Russia. In this regard, she succeeds admirably. As a result, Masih relied heavily on Esther Stermer's memoir to craft some of the details of Hanna's story, but she also created her own events too. For example, the Slivkas escape first to the forest, something the Stermers did not do. When that becomes too risky, as a last resort they realize their only chance to survive is to retreat to the caves, a horrifying prospect, effectively portrayed in the novel.

Masih's characters are varied and realistic. There is the lovable, kindly Mrs. Alla Petrovich, a Ukrainian Christian who creates pysanky and who does as much as possible to help Hanna and her family. She recognizes their differences, but is tolerant and caring.  And there is the Ukrainian farmer, Stepan Illiouk and Yuri the forester who also help. Stepan does all he can to help his Jewish friends and is devastated when he witnesses the murder of hundreds of Jews near his fields.

Hanna is a strong, intelligent protagonist whose compassion is a central feature of her personality.  On her birthday a family fleeing persecution is hidden in their barn. "I listen, eyes wide. A whole family in our barn? Fleeing for their lives? I think of the cold barn, the lack of heat, wind whistling down from the mountains and through the drafty boards, the miles they still have to travel." Hanna gives her father the warm, long scarf her sister Leeba made for her birthday.  Later on from the safety of the hilltop, Hanna watches all the Jews huddled together in the town. "My heart breaks to see their misery. How I wish I had many scarves to hand out." When her friend Levi is depressed on his sixteenth birthday because no one notices, Hanna does notice and offers him a handful of dried crabapples.

As a character, Hanna feels very realistic. When they are ready to leave their home for the forest, Hanna struggles to pray. "I am not much in the mood to be thanking God for things that seem frightening, like living in the forest, but when we thank God for the food we can finally eat, I join in." Hanna struggles terribly at times, wondering how Sonia could possibly have a baby when life is so terrible. She has little hope for the future but in the end that hope is restored.

Despite all the evil around them, Hanna's parents endeavour to teach her not to become like the Germans. This is best demonstrated when Fedir Wolinski appears half-dead at their hideout in the forest. Wolinski was the lamplighter in Kwasova, friendly to everyone before the war. But when the Germans came he turned on his Jewish neighbours and became the Tzeler, a Death Counter, actively looking for Jews in hiding and keeping track of the dead in the shetele. When the Germans shoot his wife, Wolinski knows his time of reckoning is coming and so he flees. Hanna learns from her parent's actions. "But my parents taught me something when they took in the Death Counter. Life is not good, however you are living it, if you become like those who don't value you."

Early in the novel, Hanna is given a copy of Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc which she treasures. To Hanna, her journey to survive parallels that of Joan. When she leaves her village, just as Joan left hers, Hanna understands what Joan feels. "I am at the end of the first chapter in Joan of Arc, where Joan, at seventeen, is looking back on her distant village, 'trying to print these scenes on her memory'. I am doing the same."  Hanna begins to use Joan of Arc to keep track of time. Like Joan, Hanna notes, "It is easy to lose track of time in one room you never leave, away from normal routines..."  Like Joan too, a tree plays an important part in Hanna's life. "I find a beech tree in the Joan of Arc story as well. A fairy tree. A mystical tree connected to the children of Domremy, the hamlet she grew up in. I feel like I am following in her footsteps...." For her it is the Witness tree which is used as a means of communication in the forest. And as Hanna and her family  struggle to survive in the gypsum caves, she tries to draw on Joan's heroic example. "I try to be like Joan, who endured prison and torture. 'A great soul, with a great purpose, can make a weak body strong and keep it so,' Mr. Twain wrote." Hanna's purpose is to live.

My Real Name Is Hanna is a well written historical fiction novel that focuses on the plight of the Jewish population in Ukraine during World War II. Not many readers will know how deeply the Jewish people living in Eastern Europe suffered. Very few Jews in the Ukraine survived the war. And years later, Chris Nicola, attempting to learn the origins of the artifacts in the caves, would discover this history hidden. This is a novel that will place readers securely into a little known event, allowing them to experience the trauma of being hunted to the point of having to live for over 500 days in a dark cave.

Book Details:
My Name is Hanna by Tara Lynn Masih
Simsbury, Connecticut:   Mandel Vilar Press  2018
195 pp

The Language of Fire by Stephanie Hemphill

The Language of Fire is another retelling of the story of St. Joan of Arc, the Catholic teenager from the village of Domremy, who turned the tide in the Hundred Years War, saving France from English occupation.

Born in 1412 in Domremy, to Jacques and Isabelle D'Arc, peasant farmers,  Joan was the youngest in her family that included three brothers and a sister. Joan excelled at spinning and sewing and it was her nature to be prayerful, to help in all the family chores, and to care for the poor. She was known to frequent the parish church and to pray. When she was thirteen-years-old Joan, became aware of a voice accompanied by a flash of light that spoke to her. In her vision, she saw St. Michael the Archangel who bid her to be a good girl and who told her that St. Catherine and St. Margaret would soon come to her. When the two saints first appeared to her, they were gentle in their request that she go see the dauphin and that she secure an army from him to lift the siege at Orleans. These initial visions happened in 1425 and continued for the next three years, growing more insistent.

With great reluctance, Joan began to speak of her visions, so that she could act on them and begin her mission to save France. In 1428, when Joan was seventeen, she was pressed to marry, receiving an offer from a suitor whom her parents encouraged. However, Joan knew she would never be able to carry out her mission if this were to happen, so she refused the man who offered marriage. She even had to travel to the ecclesiastical court in Toul where she won her case. 

By this time, the French had laid siege to Orleans. If Orleans was lost, France would fall to the English. Joan's voices insisted that she must save Orleans. The second part of her mission was to take the heir to the French crown, Charles VII to the city of Rheims to be crowned. This would mean clearing the way to Rheims and removing the English from the city. To accomplish all this, she was to start by meeting with Robert de Baudricourt. Her voices now insistent, Joan knew she had to act. So began her mission which would ultimately succeed, but lead her to martyrdom.

Discussion

The Language of Fire is a novel of historical fiction written in free verse. Hemphill, who admits to having been fascinated with St Joan of Arc since her fourth grade catechism class, has done a stellar job in capturing the story of Joan of Arc and her remarkable mission. Impressed with Joan's belief in herself, in her God-given mission, and her ability to rise above her station, Hemphill was motivated to write her story.

The novel begins with the author portraying Joan in a decidedly modern feminist manner as she questions her friend Mengette about what she wishes for her life, 
"Did you ever wish
to be something
besides a wife and mother?"
Formed exclusively by her Catholic faith, Joan would have been intent on living a holy life and discovering and doing the will of God, something modern teens would likely consider. Hemphill admits that she took creative license with the young Joan, since little is known about her early youth. But in some ways, portraying a historical figure with modern attitudes does no favours to today's readers, who are led to believe that young people everywhere have always thought as they do today. As the novel progresses, Joan loses this feminist perspective and her character feels more true to the Joan we know from history.

To make Joan seem more realistic and relatable, Hemphill "created an internal struggle for Joan throughout her journey."  She wanted to present Joan as a person "of flesh and blood" instead of just the "largely pious and brave warrior." For Joan, that struggle was to reconcile her mission from God with her place in society as a young woman with few rights. She knew God was calling her to a soldier's mission to save France, yet she was baffled as to how to accomplish this given this reality. She kept her mission a secret for several years, until the voices became threatening. Even her "voices" instructions to travel to meet Robert of Baudricourt, initially seemed impossible to her.

Hemphill portrays Joan of Arc as in awe of what God has done through her,
"...for I am a seventeen-year-old girl
who now leads thousands of men.

It seems beyond impossible,
yet because of Him 
I am."

as confident and in charge,
"Because I need answer to no one,
except God and the dauphin."

full of faith and virtue,
"I explain with a smile,
'All who follow me into battle,
I must be assured
I will see again in heaven.' "

Hemphill simplified one aspect of Joan's story; the voices who direct her. Joan of Arc indicated that she had visions and heard the voices of St. Michael the Archangel, St. Catherine and St. Margaret. Instead, the author merged their voices into one voice, the voice of God, "...not only for ease of reading and comprehension, but more importantly because although in the fifteenth century hearing the voices of saints was not hard for people to imagine, modern readers do not in large part pray to saints." But many, as Hemphill notes in her Author's Note, do pray to God.

The Language of Fire captures the complexity of Joan's mission, the physical, political and social obstacles she had to overcome, the utter depravity of her imprisonment, the corrupted trial she endured and the horror of being burned alive at the stake, her naked corpse raised up and burned, her ashes thrown into the Seine. This barbarism is hard to comprehend in what was Catholic society at the time. It demonstrates how both English leaders and the Catholic hierarchy at the time were working for their own interests, to the point of martyring a young woman.

The theme of fire can be found throughout the novel, foreshadowing Joan's martyrdom. It is a foreshadowing of the gruesome, brutal end Joan experiences at the hands of the English. The novel begins with Joan burning at the stake in 1431, expecting the fire to speak. Throughout her young life Joan has experienced dreams involving fire. It is always the same dream, Joan trapped in the rafters of her father's barn, the fire lit by English soldiers. Told by her voices that she will die young, Joan comes to suspect that she will "face a deadly fate somewhere beyond these victories." The dreams of fire haunt her in prison and to the very end when her fate is sealed.

It's evident from this retelling that Hemphill undertook considerable research into Joan's life. In fact, the author travelled to France, visiting the city of Rouen and walked its narrow streets as well as the courtroom where she was tried. Hemphill also read numerous biographies and consulted the trial transcripts.

If you read any fiction novel about Joan of Arc this year, The Language of Fire is highly recommended. Well written, true to Joan's life and filled with plenty of interesting details, it is a captivating account of Joan of Arc's heroic life.

Image credit: https://www.jeanne-darc.info/biography/visions/

Book Details:

The Language of Fire by Stephanie Hemphill
New York: Balzer and Bray       2019
492 pp.

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys

 "Sometimes the truth is dangerous, Julia. But we should search for it nonetheless..." Antonio, Julia's husband.

Ana Torres Moreno works as a maid at Castella Hilton Madrid, in Madrid Spain. It is 1957, almost twenty years after the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. During the war Ana has lost her parents; her father executed and her mother imprisoned  and murdered for wanting to open a Montessori school. For this crime her family was broken apart. Now Ana lives in silence, never mentioning her parents, dreaming of a life she cannot possibly have and of leaving Spain some day.

Now twenty years later, dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco has opened up Spain to tourists again. One such tourist is Daniel Matheson, from Dallas, Texas. Daniel, who is an only child, is with his parents who are in Spain to secure an deal for his father's oil company. They have rooms at the Castella Hilton Madrid.


Recently graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas, Daniel will attend Texas A and M University in the fall. His father wants him to take over the family oil business upon graduation, but Daniel is determined to be a photojournalist. To that end he is one of five finalists for the 1957 Magnum Photography Prize. With the trip to Spain, Daniel is hoping to get some great photographs that will win him the coveted prize and enable him to attend journalism school, an endeavour his father has made clear he will not finance.

Out on the street, Daniel who speaks fluent Spanish,  takes a picture of a nun carrying a bundle, the wind revealing the gray face of a dead baby. It is the last shot for the roll of film so Daniel quickly reloads another roll into his camera. When the Guardia Civil,  the military force that serves General Franco appear, Daniel quickly takes a shot, but he is at once accosted by the guards who rough him up, order him to remove the film, question him as to where he is staying and then escort him back to the hotel.

Ana and Daniel first meet when he returns unexpectedly to his room after his encounter with the Guardia Civil. After work that day, Ana goes to a workshop on Puerta del Sol where she helps her sister Julia sew traje de luces, the suit of lights worn by the matadors. The suit of lights is so called because it is covered in gemstones and beads sewn into fabric. In another room the master tailor, Luis is fitting the matador Ordonez. Julia and her husband Antonio have a four month old daughter who is not very healthy. Julia's work helps to feed their family and pay their debts. They hope to move from the impoverished Vallecas to a small flat in Lavapies. Ana tells Julia about her assignment to a very wealthy American family and how their son has access to American magazines. Julia warns Ana that their life is very different and to keep her distance.

That night Daniel attends a dinner reception at the Van Dorn's villa in Madrid. Daniel meets Shep Van Dorn, the U.S. public affairs officer for the American embassy and his son Nicholas who seems to Daniel to be a typical rich kid, interested in parties and women. Shep tells Daniel that Spain has many stories based on its geography and then introduces him to Benjamin (Ben) Stahl who works out of the Madrid Bureau of the New York Herald Tribune. Ben is impressed with Daniel's intensity and determination and also that he is a finalist for the Magnum Prize. During the reception, Daniel also learns from Nick that the embassy is processing the paperwork for an "orphanage deal" which he assumes means a monetary donation from his parents.

Purificacion (Puri), Ana's cousin works at the Inclusa, a orphanage that provides for destitute mothers and their babies. Babies arrive at the Inclusa via an opening in the wall near the door, called el torno. But some babies arrive with a nun or a doctor by the back door. Puri's questioning about this has gone unanswered. Puri's job is to interact with the babies so they will develop normally. She is especially devoted to one orphan, whom she has secretly named Clover. Puri is happy because Sister Hortensia, who runs the orphanage has arranged for Clover to be adopted. As she leaves the Inclusa, Puri encounters a distraught woman who states her baby was taken two days ago to be baptized and has not returned. She asks Puri if her baby is here but Puri tells her this is the orphanage.

At the orphanage, the newborns are easily adopted. It is the older children who concern Puri. When she is sent by Sister Hortensia to place notes into the files downstairs, Puri begins to read some of the information in the files. She discovers that Clover's adoption fee is the astronomical amount of 200,000 pesos. She wonders if the Inclusa works to find homes for the children, why are the adoption fees so high?

As Puri continues to read through the files over the next weeks, she discovers letters from parents claiming the child they were shown to be deceased did not match their baby, with other letters claiming outright that the orphanage has stolen their newborn. Doubt and hesitation begin to plague Puri who continues to read through some of the hundreds of letters, dating back over twenty years. These letters are in the "Resolved File" but they do not appear to be resolved!

More questions arise when Puri is sent by Sister Hortensia to work in the maternity clinic down the street from the Inclusa. Her discovery of a dead baby in the freezer at the clinic instead of the morgue add even more distress. She brings her questions to her confessor, asking him, "...is it better for a child to have no parents than the wrong parents..." Eventually, when her parents are out, Puri begins to investigate at home, looking at letters and pictures in a box her mother has hidden in a closet. And she begins to wonder about her own past and who she really is.

Ana's brother Rafael (Rafa) and his friend Fuga are "comrades of hardship".  They spent their youth in a boys' home in Barcelona, a humiliating experience where they were both abused. Now Rafa works in a slaughterhouse while Fuga whose name means "Escape" is a grave digger. Fuga is determined to become a famous torero and earn enough money in order to expose the evil that is going on in the children's homes. He has discovered that some of the small coffins which feel too light do not contain the bodies of babies. Fuga believes "babies born to Republican or poor families are being stolen,that the church wants the children redeemed and raised by Francoists."Rafa asks his sister Julia to ask Luis to lend Fuga a suit of lights. He explains that Fuga has been practicing on the bulls in the willow field using a blanket dyed with red bricks. Julia agrees but asks Rafa to speak to Ana whom she is certain is headed for more trouble.

When Daniel's parents travel to Valencia, Ana takes him on a trip through Madrid to reach a photography shop to have his film developed. He meets twelve-year-old Carlitos, the bell hop at the Castellana Hilton and Lorenza, a tacky hotel employee and Miguel who runs a camera shop. Miguel is impressed with Daniel's expensive Nikon as well as his photographs.

Although Daniel's relationship with Ana deepens, life in Spain does not flow smoothly. Rafa is jailed, Ana loses her job at the hotel, Julia's daughter becomes seriously ill and Daniel and his parents leave, returning to their life in America with a surprise even Daniel couldn't predict. But over the years, secrets will be uncovered, second chances will be discovered and love rekindled.

Discussion

The Fountains of Silence is an unforgettable novel about war, repression, poverty, secrets, and the burden of silence often borne by the survivors. But it is also about love, hope and redemption. The novel is set twenty years after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War which began in 1936 and ended in 1939. The Spanish Civil War was the result of a complex set of factors that dated well back into the 19th century when Spain was still a monarchy. Attempts to transition to a liberal government were fraught with uprisings, coups, and abdications during this century. In April of 1931, general elections were held and socialist and liberal republicans won in most of the provincial capitals, leading to the formation of the Second Spanish Republic.

In the 1930's Spain became a deeply polarized country. On the right politically were the Nationalists who were mainly Roman Catholics and included many landowners, businessmen and members of the military. They were opposed by the left-leaning Republicans, comprised of the educated middle class, labourers and those who worked in the cities. Elections held on February 16, 1936 saw a Popular Front government elected. This was a left wing coalition made up of working and middle class parties including the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and the Republican Left. They were determined to resist what they felt was fascism, which had already infected Italy and Germany. Spain was now wracked with violence, the outright seizure of farmland from landowners, the closure of Catholic schools, the seizure of Catholic property and desecration of churches.

However, members of the Spanish military began to plan a coup, which eventually took place on July 17, 1936. Led by three men, Emilio Mola y Vidal, General Jose Sanjurjo and eventually General Francisco Franco Bahomande, the Nationalist coup was unsuccessful and the country sank into civil war between the right Nationalists and the left Republicans. Both Mola and Sanjurjo were dead by the middle of 1937, leaving Franco to lead the war. With neither side strong enough to win the war, both enlisted military support from other countries. Eventually the Nationalists, with help from Germany and Italy, gained control of much of Spain. On March 28, the Republican armies began to surrender and disband.

Sepetys weaves together four stories; Ana, daughter of a middle class family whose parents were murdered and imprisoned for wanting to start a school and who longs for something more than the impoverished life she shares with her sister Julia and her brother Rafa; Daniel son of a wealthy American oil tycoon who dreams of becoming a photojournalist but who is expected to enter the family business; Ana's brother Rafa and his friend Fuga, survivors of a brutal boys school who discover that the coffins they are burying are empty; and Puri, Ana's cousin who works at the Inclusa and who longs to uncover the secrets of the orphanage and possibly her own identity.

The Fountains of Silence is a novel about how the greatest suffering in war is often borne by the youngest and most innocent, the children and teenagers who are unable to fight back against the violence and repression. Sepetys wanted to tell their story. "During the postwar period and dictatorship in Spain, young people were left amidst the wreckage to navigate an inheritance of heartache and responsibility for events they had no role in causing. The young adult narrative is what I chose to represent in the story -- innocent youths who, instead of pursuing hopes and dreams, became fountains of silence."

Almost everyone in the novel has a secret. Daniel has secrets; his plans to attend journalism school, his breakup with girlfriend Laura Beth, his blossoming relationship with Ana, his encounter with the Guardia Civil. Daniel's parents have their own secrets, a miscarriage, an illness and then an adoption. Ana, Julia and Rafa's share the secret of their family's involvement in resisting Franco, the murder of their father and the imprisonment, torture and public humiliation of their mother. Rafa and Fuga have the secret of their abuse at the boys home, of Fuga training in the fields illegally. Julia too has a secret, one that we don't learn until the very end.

It is Julia, who is considered the guardian of the family secrets who wonders at the cost of silence. "What is the cost of silence? If she remains quiet about her suspicions, is granting acceptance of what is happening? If she imposes silence upon Ana and Rafa, what is that telling them? That she is ashamed of their parents? Their parents did nothing wrong. They were academics, hardworking, sophisticated people. Their father wanted to create a school outside of the Catholic Church. That is all..."

One of the greatest strengths of this novel is Sepetys' characters. They are authentic to the era, unique and interesting. For example, Daniel Matheson is an endearing character, a teenager growing into adulthood as a young man with courage, compassion and honour. He is a protector and therefore very appealing. His love for Ana is genuine. Her family justifiably are concerned over her relationship with Daniel, but his honour is demonstrated in how he treats her. Daniel represents the reader looking into a Spain he cannot really understand, even though his mother is Spanish. Sepetys discovered during her research for the novel, that understanding what happened in Spain so many years ago was difficult for an outsider like herself. Daniel is that outsider, looking in, his focus sharpened by the lens of his camera.

Daniel's strength as an outsider is that he can tell the human story of what's happening Spain and Ben Stahl urges him to do so. "But you. You can capture a real story here -- a photo essay to show a different side of Spain than the one on the postcards. All the foreign correspondents are chasing the same threads....But they're mission something. What about the people of Spain? What is life like under a dictatorship? What's it like for young people when textbooks are government sponsored? What are their hopes and dreams when there are no free elections and only one religion?"

Ana, Julia, Rafa and Fuga are all well crafted characters, used to portray the suffering of the Spanish people during the Franco years. Ana, Julia and Rafa had their lives upended when Franco took power, losing their parents and being separated. Their grinding poverty is contrasted by the wealth of Daniel and the other wealthy Americans living in Spain. This is especially evident when Daniel visits the slum, Vallecas where Ana lives with her family in a concrete cement shack, without running water or toilets, a broken window and door and a collapsing roof. In contrast, Daniel's father meets with General Franco and his family is able to afford to dine at the renowned restaurant Lhardy, where "Waiters stand behind screens, so not to interrupt the guests but watch and tend to their every need." Both Rafa and Fuga have suffered mental and physical abuse and deprivation. Julia's husband, Antonio has a left foot that drags a bit, an injury courtesy of the Guardia Civil.

At a hefty 500 pages, The Fountains of Silence is an epic work of historical fiction. It is a work that touches not only on the poverty and repression the Spanish people endured under Franco's dictatorship, but also on the heinous practice of stealing newborn infants from families deemed too poor or too "Red". The theme of missing children is woven throughout the novel and is a part of the stunning conclusion. It is through the character of Puri, that the reality of this practice is exposed in the novel.

Sepetys includes an Author's Note about the Spanish Civil War, a section on Research and Sources which includes an extensive list of sources the author consulted, a Glossary and a section of black and white photographs from the era. 


Book Details:

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys
New York: Philomel Books    2019
495 pp.

Our House Is On Fire: Greta Thunberg's Call To Save the Planet by Jeanette Winter

Our House Is On Fire is a children's picture book that focuses on telling the story of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. Her story begins in the city of Stockholm, where Greta who is quoted as stating "All my life I've been invisible..." is the lonely girl who sits at the back of the classroom and never says anything. After a presentation by her teacher on climate change, Greta who could focus for hours on anything, found her attention drawn solely to this topic.

After watching films and doing hours of reading on climate change, Greta began to focus on the many horrible natural disasters that were taking place in the world.

Greta became so concerned about climate change that "She barely ate or spoke." and she decided to do something. She went on strike from school and sat with a sign in front of Sweden's parliament. Every Friday, Greta would go on strike from school. After all, "What use is school without a future?" Soon she was joined by other students and their school strikes were noticed and spread. Eventually, Greta was invited to speak at the United Nations climate talks in Poland and at thethe World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She wanted the world to panic as she was.

Discussion

Our House Is On Fire is piece of alarmist nonfiction in the format of what appears to be a benign picture book for children. It pretends to tell the story of Greta Thunberg, but is a piece of propaganda promoting climate change ideology to our youngest citizens, without context, fact or balance.  It is something parents should be aware of and that their children may be exposed to in school.

Greta Thunberg is presented as a lonely child who is largely ignored by her classmates until she learned about climate change from her teacher. There is no mention that Greta was a mere eight-years-old when her obsession with climate change began.  In Our House Is On Fire, Greta is said to have focused on an entire list of climate catastrophes; "She saw ice melting into the sea, disappearing. She saw mighty winds and torrential rains howling across the lands. She saw coral reefs, deep down in the sea, pale as ghosts, bleached by the warming waters. Greta saw living creatures everywhere, struggling to stay alive. Greta saw floodwaters covering houses and people and animals. She saw cities swallowed under rising oceans. She saw the smoldering sun scorch the earth, leaving it bone dry. She saw blazing wildfires, racing through the forests." 

Clearly Greta was a young girl obsessed and terrorized by these events, unable to process them or place them within the larger context of our planet's ecosystem. For example, tsunamis are rare, blizzards are a normal part of winter weather as are hurricanes in the summer. Forest fires such as the ones that were burning in the Amazon jungle in the summer of 2019, are part of the natural ecosystem and its rejuvenation process. There is no explanation of the role of media in all this. Media bias has focused on "sexy topics" such as that relating to the Amazon jungle while no mention was made by the media of the forest fires that also occur annually in Africa.

This obsession left Greta sad and unable to eat or speak. To her, the future was bleak and full of despair. There is no mention of the fact that Greta Thunberg, in light of her behaviour, was then diagnosed with Aspergers, a developmental disorder characterized by difficulties with social interaction, as well as the tendency to obsessively focus on one topic . One wonders where her parents where to calm her fears and help her put events like natural disasters into perspective. Instead, they fed her fears, becoming vegan and giving up air travel, something that cost her mother her opera career and likely has had little if any impact on world CO2 levels.

With "...each day more unhappy than the next..." Greta began to act on her fears. She went on a school strike and eventually spoke at world events. She told people, "I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day...I want you to act as if the house was on fire." Greta blamed all adults for what is happening.

Filled with these alarmist sentiments, Our House Is On Fire, ostensibly a biography, presents a very simplistic approach to a complex problem. There is no context to the issue of climate change. Instead children are presented with numerous scenarios of natural disasters some of which have never happened (such as cities being swallowed by rising seas) in a way that may be frightening and overwhelming. This picture book plays on children's fears in very destructive and manipulative way. It tells children they cannot trust their own parents to care for their future. It never mentions that each generation has done things that the next sees it might do better. There is no balance because there is no balance in Greta's approach either.

It's impossible to talk about Greta Thunberg without mentioning climate change. But such treatment should be honest, open and realistic. It should not work to alarm young children in the hopes of making them act out of panic. Greta wondered what good attending school would be. She need only have looked to young Boyan Slat who is working to clean the oceans of plastic waste with his invention. With her despairing, frantic and panicked message, Thunberg is no model for young children to aspire to.


Book Details:

Our House Is On Fire by Jeanette Winters
New York: Beach Lane Books       2019

Apollo 8: The Mission That Changed Everything by Martin W. Sandler

But now it was the whole globe receding in size, dwindling until it became a disk.  We were the first humans to see the world in its majestic totality, an intensely emotional experience for each of us. We said nothing to each other, but I was sure out thoughts were identical -- of our families on that spinning globe. And maybe we shared another thought I had...This must be what God sees." 
                                                                                                             Frank Borman


As with any book about the space race, Apollo 8: The Mission That Changed Everything begins with President John F. Kennedy's famous speech on May 25, 1961, challenging America to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's.

The Americans seemed to be well behind the Soviets who had not only launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, but also sent Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin into orbit around the Earth, the first human to do so. In 1961, communism seemed to be on the rise in every part of the world: a new communist government had been established in Cuba, half of the city of Berlin had just been taken over by communists and the civil war in Vietnam was about to intensify.

In the 1960s, the space program in the U.S. continued to work towards its goal of putting a man on the moon. Each mission built upon the  previous one, which offered  lessons. In 1968, Apollo 8 was set to launch on December 21 and this mission would be another step in that goal, testing the lunar module. But the objective of the mission was drastically altered and escalated when NASA learned from the CIA that the Soviets had a rocket capable of carrying two men to the moon and that it was being moved into launch position. Although the Soviets would not able to land on the Moon, a successful mission to the Moon would mean they would be able to say they were first to the Moon.

George Low, manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program knew he had to act. Low came up with the plan to send Apollo 8, sans lunar lander to the Moon, to test communications and navigation systems. Low knew he would have to sell this to the head of the Apollo project, Christopher Kraft, but in the end he succeeded. Not only was getting to the Moon first an important technological achievement in terms of the space race, it was important too. One of the main objectives of the space race was to prove that American capitalism was more successful than Soviet communism.

All three Apollo 8 astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were on board with the revised mission objectives. Eventually NASA's Administrator, James E Webb also gave the go-ahead for the revised mission that would see Apollo 8 head to the moon and return to Earth. This decision meant enormous changes to the mission; a new flight plan and retraining the astronauts, in particular Bill Anders who was to pilot the lunar module but now had to train for the command and service modules. Anders was also responsible for "surveying the lunar surface for future landing sites."

What follows is the thrilling account of Apollo 8's remarkable journey from liftoff atop the Saturn V rocket to the Moon and back. Apollo 8: The Mission That Changed Everything tells the story of how NASA scientists and the Apollo 8 astronauts came together, took enormous risks to make a daring mission an outstanding success.

Discussion

Apollo 8: The Mission That Changed Everything tells the story of the remarkable mission that was rejigged in order to put America ahead of the Soviets in the space race. Sandler begins by setting the stage for the events of Apollo 8 - the famous speech by Kennedy. However, the original objectives of the Apollo 8 mission were drastically altered when new intelligence revealed the Soviet Union's potential ability to travel to the Moon. From this point on, Sandler focuses on the changes to the Apollo mission and the enormous risks the Apollo 8 astronauts were being asked to undertake.

These risks included creating new flight plan and using the largest rocket in the world that was still largely untested. Then there was the difficulty of both placing the spacecraft on trajectory to intersect the Moon as well as achieving lunar orbit. NASA flight director Gene Kranz likened the first to "threading the needle, shooting a spacecraft from a rotating Earth at the leading edge of the Moon, a moving target a quarter of a million miles away."  The enormous distance between the Earth and Moon meant that should anything go wrong, and the trip back was three days. The astronauts also needed to perform an SPS burn to put them into orbit around the moon and a third burn to push them out of lunar orbit and back to Earth. On their return to Earth they also needed to accomplish reentry exactly. If the spacecraft's reentry was too steep, the gravitational forces on the astronauts as well as temperatures on the craft's heat shield would be extreme. A too shallow reentry would mean the risk of the spacecraft "bouncing off" the atmosphere causing it to "soar into a huge elliptical orbit around the earth."

Earthrise taken by Bill Anders

Much of the backstory to space exploration and the United States and Soviet space programs is told in separate sections using light blue paper with a faint image of the Moon. These sections are informative and fill in the blanks on certain aspects of the story, both cultural and science related. For example,  Pioneers of Rocketry explores the three scientists who laid the groundwork for modern rocketry, Russia's Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Germany's Hermann Oberth,  and the United States' Robert Goddard. Other special topics include Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev who developed the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and who also designed Sputnik. Other sections include Paving the Way For Apollo 8 which summaries the first space missions that laid the groundwork for Apollo 8 including Project Mercury and the Gemini missions, The Families which focuses on how the mission impacted the astronauts families, and What's In A Name which discusses how areas of the Moon have been named.

Apollo 8 captures the astronaut's reactions to the incredible experiences of seeing Earth diminish as they travelled towards the Moon, recording the Earth rise on the Moon's horizon and seeing the dark side of the Moon for the first time. All three astronauts were deeply affected by these sights. What struck them was the Earth's fragility. Anders' colour photograph titled Earthrise made different impressions on each of the astronauts. For Lovell, it "became a symbol of the Earth's fragility, a reminder of just how small and insignificant the Earth's place in the universe truly is..." This impression was not unique to just Lovell, but to the millions and millions of people on Earth who watch the broadcasts from Apollo 8 and who saw this photograph.

Apollo 8: The Mission That Changed Everything is a fascinating account of a mission that changed the space race and gave the American's the technical advantage to successfully land on the Moon a mere seven months later. Sandler includes plenty of photographs, a detailed section containing Source Notes, a Bibliography, short profiles of the Apollo 8 astronauts after the mission and an Index. A great book for anyone interested in accounts of the space race and the Apollo missions.

Earthrise image:  https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181224.html

Book Details:

Apollo 8: The Mission That Changed Everything by Martin W. Sandler
Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press        2018
160 pp.

A Bear In War by Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat

A Bear In War is based on the true story of a young girl who sends her beloved teddy bear over to Belgium in the hopes it will protect her father during World War II.

In 1916, with World War I at a stalemate in Europe, ten-year-old Aileen Rogers and her new teddy bear named Teddy are traveling home in their sleigh to their farm in East Farnham, Quebec.  Teddy notices that Aileen is wearing a metal brace on her leg and limps. She reveals to Teddy that she had polio and now has to wear a brace to support her weakened leg. This means she can't run and jump like the other children. Teddy tells her that this doesn't matter to him. Aileen's younger brother Howard thinks Teddy is rather small, but her father points out that "Sometimes the smallest ones have the biggest hearts..."

There are plenty of chores to do both in the house and on the farm. Aileen and Teddy set the table and after dinner wash the dishes. Afterwards, Aileen and her mother help in the barn, feeding the horses hay and oats.  Aileen tells Teddy about the war explaining that war happens "when people from one country fight people from another country."  That night as her father reads stories about the war in the Montreal Gazette he is worried.

The morning is filled with more chores, which Aileen does with Teddy "snug in the pocket of Aileen's coat." That afternoon they return to town to attend church. In town they see recruiting posters for the war. There are few men at church as most of them are off fighting in Europe.

One night Aileen's life changes forever when her father tells her that he has enlisted to go fight in the war. Although Aileen is proud of her father, she tells Teddy that she wishes he could stay at home.Aileen's father travels to Valcartier where he trains to be a soldier. Aileen along with her mother, brother and Teddy travel to visit her father at Valcartier.

Aileen's father's letters eventually reveal that he has sailed to England on the RMS Hesperian. After time in England, her father is eventually sent to Belgium. After much consideration, Aileen decides to send her most prized possession, Teddy to her father, "...to remind him of home and to keep him safe."  Sadly, although Teddy would return home, Aileen's father did not. Teddy would see all that the war would involve and Aileen's father's heroic efforts to help the soldiers as a medic. He was recovered from a pocket in her father's uniform and sent home.

Discussion

A Bear In War is a truly a deeply moving and endearing picture book. Although the story is based on real events about a young girl losing her father in the Battle of Passchendaele in the fall of 1917, it also a story about love and sacrifice.

Aileen Rogers' Teddy

Aileen's father, Lawrence Browning Rogers served with the Fifth Canadian Mounted Rifles from 1915 to 1917. Lawrence wrote over two hundred letters to his wife, Janet May in that time. Both Aileen and her brother Howard also wrote to their father. These letters and the story of Teddy remained hidden until 2002 when Lawrence Rogers' granddaughter, Roberta Roberts Innes (Howard's daughter) discovered them in a family briefcase along with other memorabilia including Teddy. A Bear In War and a second book, Bear On The Homefront were written by Lawrence Roger's great-granddaughter, Stephanie Innes and children's author, Harry Endrulat.

The authors tell Aileen's family story from the point of view of Teddy, Aileen's new teddy bear. Teddy is kind and loyal. Aileen and Teddy's relationship is at once sweet and tender. She tells Teddy her secrets, the first being that she has had polio and has to wear a leg brace. Teddy responds, "That makes no difference to me."

Teddy immediately fits into the Rogers family, accompanying Aileen as she helps with dinner and chores on the farm.  Like Aileen, Teddy doesn't like war and he misses Daddy. Eventually after her father goes to war, Aileen and Teddy come up with the idea to send him to war as well, in the hopes that Teddy can protect her father.  Teddy and Aileen who have been a comfort to one another during this difficult time, decide to make their own sacrifice and send him overseas to France. During his time at war, Teddy tells young readers a bit about what it was like for soldiers during World War I.  "A lot of the time we sat in deep trenches. They were wet and cold -- and there were rats everywhere. But the trenches helped protect us from bullets and bombs....Sometimes we got hurt when a bomb exploded nearby. Sharp things would hit us." Sadly Aileen's father does not survive and is killed  while treating soldiers during the Battle of Passchendaele. Teddy survives the war and eventually is returned to the Rogers family. His own secret is "that I fought in the war in the pocket of a hero."

A Bear In War captures the uncertainty, fear and loss experienced by the families of soldiers during the long years of the Great War - a war that was supposed to end war but ended up being a continuous blood bath. Aileen's story is very much enhanced by Brian Deine's oil painting illustrations done in soft tones that accent the warmth of Aileen and Teddy's friendship, and how friendship can help carry us through tough times.

A Bear In War is an excellent picture book that offers children a gentle introduction what life was like during the early part of the 20th century, about how families coped during wartime and what life as a soldier was like.  Teddy is the teddy bear we all imagined having when we were children.

Teddy image: https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/objects-and-photos/art-and-culture/toys-and-models/teddy-bear/


Book Details:

A Bear In War by Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat
Toronto: Key Porter Books Limited      2008

Destination Moon by Seymour Simon

In Destination Moon, prolific children's science writer Seymour Simon chronicles the events leading up to the American Moon landing in July of 1969. As expected the story opens with United States president John F. Kennedy's famous speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962. In that speech, Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. This was the start of the space race between the United States and the Communist Soviet Union.

With each page featuring full colour photographs, Simon begins by explaining the importance of learning more about the Moon to aid in our understanding of the solar system and provides so he provides readers with some basic information about our closest neighbour in the solar system.

The space era was initiated by the launch of the Soviet Union and the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik in October of 1957. The American's followed with their Explorer satellite missions.The Explorer 3 mission confirmed the existence of the Earth's magnetic fields and their protective function against damaging cosmic rays.

Destination Moon describes Project Mercury which ran from 1958 to 1963. Its six missions were designed to place an astronaut into orbit and safely return him to Earth. The group of astronauts chosen for these missions were called the "Mercury Seven" and were chosen from military test pilots. The seven were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton.

Project Gemini which spanned the years 1961 to 1966, was the next step to the moon. Its purpose was to solve some of the problems associated with landing on the Moon. In an attempt to learn more about conditions on the Moon, NASA sent seven unmanned reconnaissance missions using the Surveyor spacecraft to the Moon. Surveyor also tested the use of retro-rockets to slow down a space craft so it could achieve a soft landing.

The objective of Project Apollo from 1963 to 1972, was to land man on the Moon. Simon takes his young readers through the obstacles engineers encountered as they planned the spacecraft that would take man to the Moon. Full colour photographs accompanied by detailed text explain the Lunar Module, the Eagle and its landing on Tranquility Base, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's moon walks and the challenge to return to Earth safely.

As 2019 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Moon landings, Destination Moon is yet another of many  books written for young readers offering them all the details of the race to the Moon and the historic landing on the Moon. Seymour Simon sets the stage in his Author's Note at the very beginning, by recounting his own personal experience of watching the moon walk on the night of July 20, 1969, an event I too remember very well even though I was only ten years old! Seymour Simon was a dad at the time whose two children "Robert and Michael, cheered as Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder of the Eagle and stepped out onto the surface of the Moon."

Seymour Simon includes plenty of factoids throughout his picture book. For example the contribution of the human computers, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan to the success of the early Mercury missions is highlighted. Adults will remember their story as told in the book and movie, Hidden Figures. There is an interesting section on how the Apollo mission impacted the families of the astronauts and mention also of the speech President Richard Nixon had prepared should the astronauts fail to leave the surface of the Moon. Thankfully that disaster never materialized.

The author employs simple text and explains some basic concepts such as escape velocity and rocket stages. Terms that may be new to readers such as seismometer and basalt are highlighted in bold blue text and are explained in the Glossary at the back. A timeline summary of the Race to Space can also be found at the back.


 A great gift for the budding young astronomer.

Book Details:

Destination Moon by Seymour Simon
New York: HarperCollins     2019

Within These Lines by Stephanie Morrill

Within These Lines is a heartrending story of love and loyalty in a time of when war breeds hatred and fear. It tells the story of two teenagers, one white and one Asian, a mixed race couple, a forbidden love and two people who choose to challenge the social conventions of a country at war. Within These Lines begins three months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The story spans the period from March 21 to December 25, 1942 and is told in the alternating voices of Evalina Cassano and Taichi Hamasaki.

Evalina Cassano, an Italian-American awakens to the news that over sixty Japanese Americans living in Los Angeles have been voluntarily relocated to Manzanar in Southern California.

When Evalina expresses her concern to her mother that all the Japanese, even those born in America such as the Hamasaki children will also be forced out, her mother tries to reassure Evalina that they are safe. But Evalina is concerned because she has been secretly seeing Taichi Hamasaki, whose family supplies the produce to Alessandro's, the Casanova family restaurant.

Distraught, Evalina heads down to the market on the waterfront. But the Hamasaki's green Chevy truck is not there and someone else occupies the space where their table is usually set. This leads Evalina to take the ferry to Alameda.

Taichi's family live on a farm in Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco. On the same morning, Taichi's family is visited by FBI agents who search their home. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Taichi's family burned everything they owned that tied them to Japan including letters, family photographs, Japanese books and kimonos. Taichi's family is in the process of packing suitcases because they are moving to his Aunt Chiyu's home.

Evalina phones Taichi and they meet at the dock. Before he leaves to see Evalina, Taichi's older sister Aiko forces him to tell her about his secret relationship with Evalina. She was also in a forbidden relationship with a Caucasian and suffered a miscarriage. When Evalina and Taichi meet, she admits her fear for him. Taichi reveals that his family has reallocated their land back to their neighbours, the Medinas while they are away. The bombing of Pearl Harbor has changed all of Evalina and Taichi's future plans. Evalina has earned a scholarship to attend University of California Berkeley and they hoped Taichi would be able to do the same. The war has also changed the future for others too; Taichi's best friend Diego Medina will not enlist in the U.S.Navy and Eva's best friend Gia LaRocca is planning to marry her boyfriend Lorenzo.

Several days later, Taichi and his father Katsumi make their last delivery to the Cassano's restaurant. During this meeting, Taichi passes a note to Evalina asking her to meet him at Lafayette Park. The two have an emotional meeting, with Evalina giving Taichi her address, begging him to write and let her know what's happening. The Friday afternoon before they are due to leave, Taichi visits Evalina's home, expecting her to be alone. Instead her mother greets him and with Evalina the two say their goodbyes. Taichi reveals that they will be evacuated on Tuesday, likely to Manzanar. In a private moment, Evalina learns the Hamasaki family will leave from the civic center at noon. After Taichi leaves, Evalina's mother offers her sympathy and understanding, but Evalina is not sure how much her mother understands about her relationship with Taichi.

On Tuesday April 7, Taichi and his family arrive at the civic center to leave San Francisco. They find a long line of other Japanese American families, overseen by guards. A group with the First Congregational Church hands out sandwiches and water. It is hot and tiring waiting. Aiko spots Evalina, who as promised has come to see them. Just before he boards the bus, Evalina promises Taichi that she will wait for him and will write him.

The next morning Evalina is furious at the coverage of the "evacuation" in the local newspapers. Meanwhile Taichi and his family arrive at Manzanar and come to realize that the camp is not ready for them. As the months pass by and life goes on for Evalina, Taichi begins to wonder if they can really continue their relationship. Will he ever leave the camp? While Evalina continues to advocate for the Japanese Americans, Taichi finds himself drawn into a deadly revolt that costs a friend his life and endangers his own family.

Discussion

Within These Lines tackles the shameful imprisonment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II in response to hysteria over the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.  Japanese Americans were displaced from their homes and businesses, and placed in prison camps merely because they looked like the enemy. In this well-crafted novel, Morrill weaves together the forbidden relationship between two American teens and the events of the Japanese internment to portray the reality of life at this time.

Evalina Cassano is an Italian-American whose family has a past history of involvement in the Mafia in Chicago. She forms a strong attachment to Taichi Hamaskai, a first generation Japanese-American boy whose family supplies her family's restaurant with fresh produce. The two teens keep their relationship secret not only because they suspect their families won't approve but also because interracial marriages are illegal in California. The realization that Taichi and his family will be sent away, is devastating to both teens.

Morrill uses Evalina to express the injustice of the government actions. Unlike many of her fellow Americans, Evalina's relationship with Taichi helps her to view Japanese Americans differently, not as potential enemies but as loyal Americans who have the same dreams and desires as any other American. When Evalina visits Taichi at Manzanar and experiences the reality of the internment camp, she is further angered by the injustice of the camps and the mistreatment of these American citizens.

Initially, Evalina writes numerous letters to government officials including General DeWitt as well as to newspaper editors in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her letters to newspapers have been signed anonymously.  initially expresses her views against the internment to parents and friends. When her mother refers to the evacuees as "Japanese", Evalina points out that "the majority of the Japanese Americans who are being evacuated" have "....done nothing except be born to parents who have Japanese heritage. And most of their parents would have become citizens long ago, except that our government has denied them that option since the 1920s." 

At college Evalina's activism on the internment question spills over into her Comparative Politics class taught by Professor Blake. Despite her having visited two of the camps, Evalina receives a poor grade on her paper discussing the Japanese internment. When Evalina confronts Professor Blake about her mark, it is clear he considers her a Japanese sympathizer and later on tells her she is young and misguided. Over time however, Evalina becomes not only more vocal but also more courageous about speaking up for the rights of Japanese Americans. When Grace Bishop asks Evalina to write an article she decides it's time to sign her name. Evalina had told herself that she would be taken more seriously if people did not know she was an Italian American teenage girl. But she finally admits that she has been afraid. "I have felt afraid of people knowing that it was me, Evalina Cassano, who wrote those angry words. Afraid of being laughed at, ridiculed, told that I should just be quiet and feel grateful. Told that I'm too young to understand or too Italian to be a real American...I feel afraid of people knowing that this fight I'm fighting isn't just about the evils of racism, but that it's personal to me...." Evalina begins signing her name to her writing....

Morrill captures the era with her realistic portrayal of 1940's America attitudes and customs, especially as they related to Americans of Asian heritage. While Evalina's parents are more accepting and compassionate towards Japanese Americans, Evalina encounters others who are not. For example, her best friend's mother, Mrs LaRocca derogatorily refers to Japanese Americans as "Japs", and states, "I know I'll feel a lot better when they've been cleared out....Not that there aren't nice Japs among them, but why risk it?" This view encapsulated many Americans thoughts on the their fellow Americans of Japanese heritage. Morrill also highlights the common Caucasian tendency to lump all people from Asia together. When Evalina arrives at the market and discovers the Hamasaki's are not there she also notices that Mrs. Ling has posted a sign at her table that reads "We Are Chinese". Mrs. Ling tells Evalina that she has posted the sign because, "Some white people get confused. They think we are the enemy." 

As expected, the newspapers of the time propagandized what was being done to Japanese Americans. Evalina is furious when she reads the account of the evacuation because it is portrayed as something joyful, with "the air of an outing." The public is told that military guards were there to protect the Japanese Americans from curious onlookers when in reality the soldiers were guarding the evacuees as though they were dangerous. "Was I at the same place as this moronic journalist? Because I saw no victory signals. No broad smiles. No bobbing heads. And the only raised thumb was mine to reassure my friend that I was okay. What a load of propaganda. In America! In my own newspaper!" Evalina wonders how many Americans will think that for the Japanese Americans, this will be a fun experience. "He made having your property seized and being loaded onto a bus while surrounded by military police sound like heading off for some kind of vacation!" 

The reality of life in the internment camps is seen through Taichi's narratives. The camp consists of crudely constructed houses that in reality are barracks. There are armed guards to greet them. The barrack "floors are bare planks, coated in a layer of sand that's blown up and in. The only thing separating us from the other families already living in the barrack are the olive-colored blankets like those we're holding in our hands draped from the roof beams. One bare lightbulb dangles over each apartment, which I can see because of the open rafters." There are few working toilets, little privacy, and strange food.

Morrill describes the humiliation and shame the evacuees feel through the character of Taichi. When Taichi sees that his family of five will share a twenty-five by ten foot space for an indefinite period, he thinks, "My heart feels like a fist as it pounds in my chest. This is too much. Too much to take in. Too much to be asked of us. Too much dignity to lose all in twenty-four hours. How can this be real?"  During his first night when he has to use the toilet, a searchlight follows him from the barrack to the toilet and continues to light the steps until he reappears, following him back to his barracks. "I lie on my lumpy mattress, hot with shame as the cold Manzanar wind continues through the night." While the average American believed the camps were a place of leisure and plenty, the reality was much different.
 
The poor living conditions are not the only difficulty as Taichi and his family discover. Although the Hamasaki family is fictional, the conditions described at Manzanar and the riot that occurred there were not. The Black Dragons were are real gang that were pro-Imperial Japan and who attempted to take over the camp.

Morrill's characters are realistic, well crafted. The forbidden romance between Taichi and Evalina, set in the uncertainty of war and displacement serves to successfully draw the reader into the story. If you didn't comprehend the reality of the internment of Japanese Americans, you will after reading Within These Lines. Look for further information about the camps and the events described in the author's About The History in the book's back matter.

Book Details:

Within These Lines by Stephanie Morrill
Grand Rapids, MI: Blink     2019
350 pp.

Pluto and Beyond

Pluto and Beyond provides viewers with a fascinating look at our solar system's most enigmatic planet, the dwarf planet Pluto as well as a recently discovered feature, the Kuiper Belt.

Pluto and Beyond opens with the New Horizons mission scientists and their families waiting in anticipation for the spacecraft to fly by object 2014 MU69, now known as Ultima Thule, in the Kuiper Belt. The documentary then backtracks, giving viewers the backstory that has led the mission scientists to this historic moment.

It all began with the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft on a Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral on January 19, 2006. New Horizons flew past the planet Mars seventy-eight days later. A year after launch, New Horizons flew past Jupiter, capturing a volcanic eruption on Io, a Jupiter moon. Nine years after its launch, New Horizons began its approach to the Pluto system, having flown past Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

From Earth, Pluto is nothing but a blur in the sky. But the New Horizons mission offers  scientists a first real look at this mysterious dwarf planet. Everything goes well until  July 4, 2015, when mission scientists inexplicably lose contact  with the spacecraft. Mission scientists eventually determined that the craft's computers had been overloaded. Alice Bowman, the Mission Operations Manager and her team managed to upload the necessary instructions to the spacecraft enabling it to function in time for the Pluto flyby.

The flyby reveals Pluto to be a planet of mountains made of ice and a massive glacier of methane and nitrogen ice. Planetary astronomers and astrophysicists now have more questions than answers as they speculate on Pluto's planetary geology and the possibility that conditions may be conducive for life.

The documentary then explores the history of our knowledge about Pluto beginning with its discovery  in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, a young American farm boy. Astronomers argued about Pluto's mass, eventually coming to the conclusion that it was smaller than Earth's moon. 

Beyond Pluto, the solar system was a mystery, an unknown. However, two astronomers, David Jewett and Jane Luu, discovered that there was much more than just empty space beyond Pluto. For six years, they searched the night sky, looking for evidence of something beyond Pluto. In 1992 they discovered an object located beyond Pluto and orbiting the Sun. They soon discovered many more objects in this region. Now known as the Kuiper Belt, is largely unknown to astronomers because it is so far away from Earth and therefore difficult to explore. Their discoveries led astronomers to theorize that Pluto was likely part of the Kuiper Belt.

The big unknown for the New Horizons mission was what to explore after Pluto. As New Horizons was approaching the Pluto system, astronomers began to search for an object in the Kuiper Belt that would be within the fuel capabilities of the spacecraft. In 2014, with the assistance of the Hubble Telescope, astronomers discovered an unknown object, designated 2014 MU69, eventually named Ultima Thule. However, finding an object was the first of many problems to solve.

The team needed to know more about Ultima Thule and one way to do that was to observe a stellar occultation which would help them determine the size and shape of the object. The astronomers needed two pieces of information: the exact location of Ultima Thule and a star that would be blocked out momentarily by the passage of Ultima Thule allowing observation of the object's shadow from Earth. The Hubble Telescope provided researchers with Ultima Thule's position. The Gaia Space Observatory, launched in 2013 was in the process of mapping the position, distances and motions of stars with precision. It could provide the data on a star that would be blinked out by Ultima Thule's passage in front of it.  Observing a stellar occultation is difficult because of the distance involved, the orbit pathway and many other factors.

After two failed attempts in 2017 to view occultations, Marc Buie and his team succeeded on July 17, 2017 in Patagonia, Argentina. With volunteers holding plywood to block the wind, the astronomers observed the star blink out for two seconds as Ultima Thule passed in front of it. In all, five different telescopes captured the occultation and provided the team with some interesting information. Ultima Thule is estimated to be about twenty miles across but even more interesting is the Kuiper Belt object's unusual shape. Scientists eventually settled on the theory that it is a "contact binary" object formed when the solar system formed.

Scientists believe that the planets formed due to a process called pebble accretion, where bits of dust, rock and gas clump together to form planetoids. It's possible that Ultima Thule is one such object that formed long ago when the solar system was beginning to form. In other words, it offers an opportunity to look back on the creation of our solar system.

On January 1, 2019, at 12:33am, New Horizons sails by Ultima Thule, a mere 2,200 km away. Telemetry from the spacecraft take six hours to travel the four billion miles from Ultima Thule to Earth. The results are breathtaking and enlightening. The New Horizons team is ecstatic as all of their hard work has paid off. The accomplishment, to view an object scientists did not even know existed when New Horizons was launched in 2006 is even more impressive.

Discussion

The New Horizons mission was tasked to explore the farthest regions of our solar system through the New Horizons mission, launched in January 16, 2006. The mandate of the mission was to explore the edge of our solar system, occupied by the dwarf planet Pluto as well as objects in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto. The journey to Pluto would take well over nine years.

The New Horizons spacecraft was designed, built and operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The science payload includes "an imaging spectrometer to probe atmospheric composition and planet structure, a visible and infrared camera to obtain high-resolution color maps and surface composition maps; a long-range telescopic camera for high-resolution surface images; particle spectrometers to measure charged particles in and around Pluto’s atmosphere; a detector to measure masses of space-dust particles; and two copies of a radio science experiment to examine atmospheric structure, surface thermal properties and planet mass." (1)

In February 2007, New Horizons flew past the planet Jupiter, and using its gravity to assist it on towards Pluto. In 2015, the spacecraft began a six month exploration of the Pluto system, culminating with a closest flyby on July 14. New Horizons gave scientists and the world a first close up look at Pluto. But it also allowed them to explore the Kuiper Belt, a region of the outer solar system that is similar to, but much larger than, the asteroid belt.

With a NOVA team embedded in the New Horizons mission team, Pluto and Beyond presents all the details, struggles and accomplishments in the exploration of the Pluto system. Viewers who haven't seen the photographs of Pluto from this mission will be understandably astonished. This mysterious planet that appears as a blurry image from Earth is revealed to look like an ice-covered Mars, with red hues.

While the impressive accomplishments of New Horizons Pluto mission and the beautiful photographs of Pluto are captivating, the most exciting part of the mission was the astronomer's struggle to work out all the details necessary to make the flyby of Ultima Thule a reality.  Pluto and Beyond captures the determination and persistence of astronomers as they work to capture the stellar occultation. Their dedication to science and the mission is obvious. In the end, we all are able to share in the fruits of their efforts as New Horizons flyby reveal Ultima Thule's unusual appearance. As of this time, New Horizons continues to send back data to Earth on the mission to Ultima Thule. Who knows what discoveries it might reveal in the remaining lifetime of the spacecraft as it makes its way into deep space.

For astronomy buffs, Pluto and Beyond is a documentary not to be missed. It is NOVA at its finest.

image credits:
Pluto and Charon: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-pluto-charon-v2-10-1-15.jpg

What Miss Mitchell Saw by Hayley Barrett

What Miss Mitchell Saw is the story of Maria Mitchell, astronomer extraordinaire. Maria was born and grew up on an island with gull-dappled dunes and fragrant wild roses. Whaling ships returned to the island harbour laden with barrels of oil and homesick sailors. Maria was taught at home by her mother and aided her father as he observed the night sky. Her father's telescope was placed on the roof of their home in Nantucket Town. He taught Maria how to use the telescope, how to observe the sky closely and to sweep each part of the sky carefully. Maria grew to know the stars and the planets, to recognize eclipses and aurora borealis, meteors and comets. Maria also learned how to rate the accuracy of the chronometers used by the whalers.

As an adult Maria taught school and she also became a librarian. However, every night was devoted to observing the night sky. However, one October night Maria discovered a patch of light that was bright but blurry near Polaris. She knew this was a comet and immediately told her father. He immediately sent a letter to Boston, to the astronomers at Harvard Observatory advising of this important discovery. Meanwhile, halfway across the world, in an observatory in Rome, an astronomer-priest had also made the same discovery.

At this time the king of Denmark had a gold medal created to be awarded to whomever discovered a new comet with a telescope. Maria Mitchell eventually was confirmed to be the first to have discovered this comet and was awarded the gold medal!

Discussion

It's wonderful to see so many new picture books telling the little-known stories of women mathematicians, doctors, astronomers, physicists, geologists and scientists whose contributions and efforts have been forgotten or overlooked throughout the centuries. What Miss Mitchell Saw tells the story of astronomer, Maria Mitchell, an American woman astronomer who lived in the middle of the 19th century on Nantucket Island.

Maria was born on August 1, 1818 on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. She was the third child born to William and Lydia Mitchell. Maria grew up in a Quaker family. Quakers believed that girls as well as boys should receive an education. As a result, Maria's father, who was an astronomer and teacher, was an important influence on her. He taught Maria about the stars, how to use a telescope, and how rate ships clocks - called chronometers. During this era, Nantucket was a major whaling port, so learning this latter task was important as whaling and merchant ships were dependent upon their accuracy.

Learning was an important part of the Mitchell family life. Maria's mother was a librarian, so books were also an integral part of their life and learning. Maria attended Cyrus Pierce's School for Young Ladies until she was sixteen-years-old. Maria's father was an astronomer and a teacher and Maria also became a teacher, teaching young girls math and science.

In 1836, Maria began working as a librarian at Nantucket Atheneum. Her evenings were spent observing the night time sky on the roof of the Pacific National Bank using the family's telescope.  On the night of October 1, 1847, Maria discovered Comet 1847 VI using a two and three-quarter inch refractor telescope. Initially Maria was reluctant to make public her discovery, mainly because she was a woman. However, her father was determined that she should receive recognition for her accomplishment and set about obtaining support for his daughter from friends in various observatories. In the end, Maria's discovery won her the gold medal offered by King Frederick VI of Denmark, who was also an amateur astronomer. Frederick had decided to offer the medal for the first astronomer who made the discovery of a new comet.

Portrait of Maria Mitchel by Herminia B. Dassel

The recognition she received for her discovery changed Maria's life. In 1856, Maria left the Atheneum to travel throughout Europe. She was able to visit Sir Isaac Newton's tomb, the observatory at Cambridge, and to visit Sir George Airy, the astronomer who established the Prime Meridian. In Rome, Maria was able to visit the Vatican Observatory and meet Father Secchi, the Vatican astronomer.

She became a trailblazer for women in society and in the sciences. She was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she was the first professor hired at the newly formed Vassar College, a womens-only college, she was published in academic journals, and was one of the founders of the American Association for the Advancement of Women.

There's no doubt Maria Mitchell made important contributions to the emancipation of women in the sciences. Hayley Barret's picture book focuses only on her discovery of Comet 1847 VI but this discovery was only the beginning for Miss Mitchell. It allowed her to be seen, as Barret points out near the end of her picture book and from there to advance the cause of women in the sciences.To fill out the rest of the story, Barrett includes many more facts about Maria Mitchell at the back in a section titled, "A Bit More About Maria Mitchell - Astronomer, Educator, Activist."

The story of Maria Mitchell is wonderfully illustrated by the starry artwork of Diana Sudyka. Her illustrations make use of a blue, black and silver palatte in keeping with the astronomical theme of the picture book. Sudyka's illustrations were rendered in gouache, watercolour and ink.

 For more information about Maria Mitchell and for resources for students and teachers please check out the Maria Mitchell Association 
This website offers considerable resources about Maria Mitchell as well as suggestions for follow-up research and reading.

image credit: https://www.mariamitchell.org/about/awards/maria-mitchells-gold-medal


Book Details:

What Miss Mitchell Saw by Hayley Barrett
New York: Beach Lane Books   2019