The Trailblazing Life of Viola Desmond: A Civil Rights Icon by Rachel Kehoe with Wanda Robson

Viola Davis was born in  1914 and grew up in the North End, where Halifax's Black community was located. Viola's ancestors had fled slavery in the United States in the 1800's. They came to Nova Scotia where they were free. However, life in Nova Scotia was not easy for Black people as society was segregated just like in the U.S. Black people did not live in the same neighborhoods or attend the same schools as white people. Few jobs were open to Black people and they were often refused service at local businesses.

Viola's parents, James Davis and Gwendolyn Irene Johnson had married secretly in 1908. Gwendolyn was of mixed-race heritage, but she considered herself Black. They moved in with James's parents in the North End and started what would be a very large family. Viola was the fifth of fifteen children, however only eleven of the children survived. Viola survived a bout of pneumonia, the illness that took the life of her younger sister, Hazel. She also survived the Halifax Explosion which severely damaged Halifax and in particular, the North End.

The Davises attended Trinity Anglican every Sunday. Viola took classes at Joseph Howe Elementary School which was integrated. She worked hard at her studies and was a top student at Bloomfield High School where she excelled in history, English and geography.

With the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, the loss of jobs and a drought on the prairies, Viola's father worked occasional jobs. Viola graduated from high school when she was sixteen-years-old in 1930. She wanted to be a teacher, but because the teachers college in Truro did not admit Black students, Viola's application was rejected. Nevertheless, Viola was able to teach at the segregated schools when she was nineteen, after passing the provincial exam. As someone who held herself to high stands, Viola also held her students to the same level.

Viola also became and advocate for her younger sister, Wanda who was twelve years her junior and experiencing racism in her class. Wanda attended Alexandra Elementary School in Grade 2. Her teacher, Ms. Reid, placed Wanda at the back of the class along with other Black students who she ignored. Ms. Reid had a rule that children who achieved top marks could sit at the front of the class. However, when Wanda achieved top marks and was moved to the front of the class, her teacher seemed upset and refused to let her answer questions. Then she sent Wanda to the Grade 3 class where she told the teacher not to assign Wanda any work. Eventually Wanda was returned to her Grade 2 class but was placed at the back of the room. When Parents' Day came around, Viola and her mother had to intervene.

Viola eventually made the decision to become a beautician, as there were almost no Black beauty salons in Canada. Black women were unable to attend beauty school in Halifax, so Viola saved her money and travelled to Montreal to attend school there in 1936. During her time in Montreal, Viola married Jack Desmond. In 1937, Viola, now a trained beautician, opened Vi's Studio of Beauty Culture in Halifax's North End.

In 1939, Viola attended the Apex College of Beauty Culture and Hairdressing in Atlantic City, N.J. to learn more about Black beauty techniques. By 1944, she opened the Desmond School of Beauty Culture so Black women could train to be hairdressers and beauticians.

But on November 8, 1946, Viola's life would take a very different turn. She travelled to Sydney, Cape Breton to deliver beauty products. When her car broke down, Viola found herself stranded in New Glasgow for the evening. She decided to take in a movie, The Dark Mirror at the Roseland Theatre. Viola bought a ticket for the downstairs section of the theatre. Patrons could sit downstairs or in the balcony. Because Viola had poor eyesight she wanted to sit close in the downstairs area. 

Viola took her seat in the downstairs section when she was told by the usher that her ticket was for the balcony. Puzzled, Viola returned to the cashier to pay extra for the downstairs ticket but was told she was "not allowed to sell downstairs tickets to you people." Viola knew that the woman at the desk was referring to Viola being Black. Viola refused to be intimidated and returned to her seat downstairs. With the movie starting, the usher returned, now advising Viola that if she didn't move, he would call the manager, Henry MacNeil.

The manager arrived and soon the police were called. Viola was on her way to jail for sitting downstairs in a movie theatre. Viola spent the night in jail and was taken before a judge the next day, without legal representation and not given the chance to make a phone call. "She was was accused of not paying the difference in tax for the downstairs ticket - a single penny." She was found guilty and fined twenty dollars plus the cost of Henry's court fees. This would be the impetus for the civil rights movement in Canada. It would be over forty years later that Viola would receive a pardon and her efforts to be treated equally would be recognized.

Discussion

The Trailblazing Life of Viola Desmond traces the life of Black Canadian, Viola Davis Desmond from her family's early roots in Nova Scotia in the 1800's to her untimely death in 1965 and her legacy into the 21st century. The authors were able to write an informative biography of Viola based on the interviews with her younger sister, Wanda Robson.

Viola Desmond, like her family and other Black Canadians spent most of her life dealing with racism. The systemic racism that existed in Canada in the first half of the 20th century was to shape their lives in almost every way. Slavery was abolished across the Empire by the British parliament on August 1, 1834. Although people of African descent living in the British colonies were legally free, they continued to face prejudice and inequality, even ninety years after the legislation. 

In the early 20th century, in Nova Scotia, schools, churches and theatres were segregated. The segregation was not uniform either within the same town or from community to community. Some hotels and restaurants would not serve Black people. Canadians of African descent lived separate from white people in their own neighborhoods. Black schools were similar to those in the United States, lacking in books, blackboards and other basic supplies. Black people couldn't work as teachers because the teachers college in Truro wouldn't admit them.  There were few jobs open to Black men and women, and those available were low paying.

Viola and her family encountered many of these prejudices and inequalities which affected the choices they made in their lives. Viola wanted to be a teacher but was refused entry into the college at Truro. Although she did teach for a time in Black schools, Viola decided to become a beautician. As a Black woman who prided herself on always looked her best, Viola would not have been able to be served in a white beauty shop. It is also possible that many beauticians of this era would not have known how to treat or style the unique hair of Black women, and likely had no inclination to learn. Viola set about learning her craft and bringing that knowledge back to Nova Scotia where she eventually opened her own shop and beauty school, and made available beauty products designed for Black women and men. 

All of this would set the stage for Viola's act of resistance in the New Glasgow theatre in 1946. She was jailed for simply wanting to sit in the downstairs area of the theatre. Her inequality extended into the Nova Scotia court system where she was found guilty and fined and then to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court where she lost her case. In that instance, the case was not about segregation. However, one judge, Justice Hall knew that Viola was treated this way because she was Black.

Although Viola Desmond was not the first to resist (journalist Carrie Best was turned out of the Roseland Theatre in 1941 for the same reason), her actions marked a turning point in the fight for equality that was beginning in the post-war period in North America. Kehoe and Robson highlight some of those individuals in sidebars. For example, Pearleen Oliver a community activist and cofounder along with her husband, Rev. Dr. William P. Oliver of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP),was successful in getting Black women the right to attend nursing schools in Canada. However, progress was slow. It wasn't until 1959 that the Fair Accommodation Practices Act was passed in Nova Scotia, banning discrimination in housing. In 1963, racial discrimination was outlawed with the passage of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act.

Viola never lived to see the changes that happened after her untimely death in 1965. Her small act of resistance was mostly forgotten but not by her sister Wanda who had initially been embarrassed by Viola going to jail. But as she matured, Wanda came to understand and began speaking about what happened. Viola eventually received a full pardon, posthumously in 2010. Today Canadians are reminded of Viola's desire for equality by her picture on the ten dollar bill. 

The Trailblazing Life of Viola Desmond is a well written biography incorporating the "personal experiences" and "treasured memories" of Viola through the interviews of her sister Wanda Robson. Readers will learn about what it was like for Black Canadians living in Nova Scotia and Canada in the early 20th century and how they fought for equality. 

What is lacking in this chapter book for young readers, are photographs of Viola Desmond and her family, and many of the places of importance in her story. It would have been extremely interesting to see items available from the Nova Scotia archives: for example an article from a provincial newspaper covering her Supreme Court case (noting that she was charged with fraud ), articles from The Clarion, one of the first Black newspapers in the province, and the Notice of Motion to take the case to the Supreme Court. At issue also is the over-use of digital illustrations which are so common in juvenile nonfiction and biographies. The authors include a Time Line, a Glossary, a list of Resources and an Index. 

Book Details:

The Trailblazing Life of Viola Desmond: A Civil Rights Icon by Rachel Kehoe with Wanda Robson
Orca Book Publishers Ltd.     2023
87 pp.

The Scarf and The Butterfly: a graphic memoir of hope and healing by Monica Ittusardjuat

The Scarf and The Butterfly is a short graphic memoir of Monica Ittusardjuat's life, exploring how the residential school experience impacted her life and her identity as Inuit.

The memoir opens with a memory of Monica and her friends, Umik, Ilupaalik, and Akittiq out for a walk to catch butterflies. Monica is wearing a beautiful scarf her mother gave her before going into the hospital. During their walk, Monica lost her scarf but she was able to find it. This was Monica's life before she was taken away to attend the residential school at Chesterfield Inlet.

Monica was born prematurely in an iglu at her family's winter camp at Akkimaniq on the western side of Baffin Island. Because her mother was very ill and in danger of dying, Monica's aunt took her for a time. Her mother recovered and Monica was reunited with her family.

Monica's family lived a subsistence way of life along with her two uncles, Mamattiaq and Tattiggat and their families. The evening was a time to relax and listen to hunting stories and legends, and play traditional games. In the spring, they traveled from one camp to the next, hunting and fishing. Summer saw the families hunt caribou, walrus, beluga, and seal.

Monica was sent to residential schools beginning in 1958, entering the Qallunaaq world. She returned home in the spring of 1969 after having attended three residential schools in Chesterfield, NWT, and in Churchill and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her experiences at these residential schools changed Monica.

She married a residential school survivor and the marriage was violent and dysfunctional. Their children witnessed many horrible things. Later on, Monica would discover that her husband had been abused. Like her, he has also experienced "the loss of culture and spirituality." So like many other Inuit, Monica set out on a personal journey to reclaim her culture and her identity, a process that continues today.

Discussion

The Scarf and the Butterfly focuses on the effects of the residential school experience, rather than the actual events that took place during the author's time at the various schools. It is memoir of the journey to healing and hope. Monica writes that her healing journey began when her granddaughter, Grace turned six-years-old. Witnessing Grace's free spirit and happiness, made Monica remember that she was once like this before attending school. She realized some of what she had lost and this caused her to grieve.

Monica explains how being sent to a residential school, far away from her family, affected her mother and their relationship. Each fall, as her children were sent back to the school, her mother noticed the silence in their home, making it as though "...someone had died." And in a way, the residential schools were killing the relationship between Indigenous children and their parents and elders. When Monica's mother became ill later in life, she wanted to know what had made them so emotionally distant. Monica explained that the bond between them was broken because of her being at the residential school. She learned to stop crying and accept this loss.

In the residential school, Monica witnessed abusive behaviour by a teacher towards students. These events brought about a deep sense of guilt and shame as she questioned whether she was to blame in some way. Even bringing a claim forward years later was devastating to Monica as it was traumatic to admit that she had been "damaged" by her experiences. She experienced feelings of "...self-hatred, shame, guilt, helplessness, and despair..." that led to reviving old addictions.

When reflecting back on her experiences at a retreat in 2002, Monica came to realize that she was "stripped of my identity and there was nothing of my culture left in me." Some of her earliest memories were of sleeping next to her parents in the deep cold of the Far North and feeling safe, and of watching her father in the early morning darkness prepare for the day's hunt. These early memories reminded Monica of her Inuit identity.

Through her difficult personal journey, Monica has been able to reclaim some of her Inuit culture: she can make Inuit clothing and jewelry, cook country food, drum dance and sing ajaajaa songs. She continues to struggle to understand what has happened to Inuit culture and her place in that culture. The process of reclaiming her own identity continues and is an ongoing one. This includes self-forgiveness, self-affirmation and forgiving those who harmed her.

The Scarf and The Butterfly portrays to readers just how complex and difficult this process has been and continues to be for residential survivors like Monica Ittusardjuat. Despite this difficult journey, Monica's memoir is one filled with hope, faith, acceptance and perseverance. She writes, 

"I am who I am, and I've become comfortable with that. I am Inuk and I have had a Qallunaaq upbringing, and I accept a bit from each. I am not the same as my Inuit friends or family, and I offer no apology for that. I have fought to become who I was meant to be. Adversities have not broken me; they have made me, and the victory is sweeter when you have fought for it than when it has been given to you."

The rich illustrations in this memoir by artists, Coco Apunnguaq Lynge and Scott Plumbe capture the beauty of Canada's Far North and our Inuit brothers and sisters, and accentuate Monica's message of healing and hope. Highly recommended for adults, teens and older children.

Book Details:

The Scarf and The Butterfly by Monica Ittusardjuat

Toronto: Inhabit Education Books Inc.    2023

67 pp.

The Cricket War by Tho Pham & Sandra McTavish

Eleven-year-old Tho Pham loves challenging his best friend, Lam to cricket fights. Lam, who lives next door, spends much time training his crickets but they rarely win. Tho lives with his parents, his older brother Vu, and his two sisters, Thao and Tien. Tho's father lost his well-paying job at the bank after the Communist takeover of Sai Gon in the spring of 1975. Now even though both his parents work, they don't make enough money. As a result, they have been selling off furniture and other possessions.

On Monday morning, Tho waits for Lam to meet him outside his house but after ten minutes, he still hasn't appeared. Even after calling his name, Lam doesn't come out of his house, so Tho leaves for school. Lam doesn't show up at school either. After school and a pick-up game of soccer, Tho asks Lam's sister, Mai if Lam is fine. She tells him that Lam and An have gone to visit a sick uncle at his farm. However, Tho knows Mai is not telling the truth. Since the Communist takeover, people from their neighborhood just disappear. Sometimes one person or two, or even a family. Boys who come of age are conscripted into the Communist army, so to avoid this fate, they are sent away by their families. Tho knows Lam and An are gone and will not be returning.

When Tho sees two soldiers banging on Lam's family's door, he tells them that soldiers have already come to take away An. Vu overhears this and admonishes Tho for doing this, telling him that he will be punished instead. Vu is also worried because he is almost eighteen and will be conscripted soon. In an attempt to prevent this, Vu wants Tho to chop off his trigger finger. Fortunately, they are stopped by their father.

One day in May, 1980, Tho and Vu are told by their father that he has arranged for them to leave Vietnam. They will travel on a boat owned by someone he knows. They leave immediately, taking an xe lam to the home of Mr. Binh. However, Mr. Binh tells their father he can take only one boy, as their father has only paid enough gold for one. They leave the older brother, Vu behind to escape with the help of Mr. Binh. A month later they receive a telegram from Vu stating that he has arrived safely in Malaysia. A few letters later on reveal that he is most likely in a refugee camp there.

A year later, in May 1981, Tho is now a year older. Tho knows that the disappearing furniture is an indication that his parents are trying to earn money for his passage out of Vietnam. With the disappearance of Mr. Binh, Tho's parents take him to his mother's sister, his Aunt Linh, who has learned that a boat is leaving near her village. Linh's husband and their five oldest children have already fled Vietnam. Only Aunt Linh and her youngest son, Phat remain. Tho's mother gives him a plastic bag with a pair of shorts, a T-shirt with a gold chain sewn into the hem. He is also given his Uncle Quang's address in America. To travel to Linh's home, Tho and his mother make the journey of over two hundred kilometers, first taking a long bus ride, then making two ferry crossings. 

After a feast of roasted pig, vermicelli and spring rolls, Tho and his mother, along with Phat, are led by Aunt Linh to the back of the house which faces the river. With a full moon to see by, they board a small boat, along with six other people. After a long trip, Phat docks the boat and Tho and the others quietly board a larger boat. Phat waves good-bye to Tho, who never was able to hug and say good-bye to his mother. 

Tho's journey to escape Vietnam has begun, as the larger boat travels towards the sea. Tho falls asleep but when he awakes in the morning he vomits in the boat. He is astonished to see Mai and her parents in the boat. She tells him her mother found out about the boat from his mother. For Tho, having Mai and her parents with him makes him feel less lonely and that someone will be there to help him. But his journey is only beginning. It will test Tho's courage and resiliency as he encounters pirates, hunger, death and even the loss of friends.

Discussion

The Cricket War is another personal account of a Vietnamese refugee from the Communist takeover of the country. Almost fifty years after this event in 1975, many memoirs and children's nonfiction books are being published about the experience of fleeing Vietnam in the aftermath of the war and the fall of Sai Gon. 

The events in this short novel are based on the experience of Tho Pham as he fled his homeland in 1981 and landed as a refugee in Toronto, Canada. Tho was twelve-years-old when his parents arranged for him to escape Vietnam alone. Unlike the character Tho in The Cricket War, the real Tho was the only member of his family to escape Vietnam at the time. His two brothers and his parents remained in Vietnam, and his older brother was eventually conscripted into the Vietnamese army. Many of the events in the novel are based on Tho's experiences during his journey from Vietnam. These are explained in the Afterword found at the back of the novel.

The authors do provide a short note on Vietnam's history in A Brief Recent History of Vietnam at the back of the novel. The Cricket War explains why many Vietnamese chose to make the dangerous journey to freedom, despite knowing it could cost them their lives. This is done through the character of Tho and Vu's father, who explains to his sons how the Vietnamese have endured centuries of occupation and simply want to rule themselves. However, to many Vietnamese, the Communists are simply another occupier. He explains, "It is torture living in a Communist country...If you had money, or a big house, or lots of land before the Communist regime, they took it from you. The control what you learn, what you say in public, even how you practice your religion. If you vocally disagree with them, they will silence you by force or intimidation, or send you away to what they call 're-education' camp. At these camps, people are treated like prisoners and forced to do hard labor. Sometimes they die of starvation or beatings. If you try to leave the country and are caught, you are sent to prison. You also might be tortured or simply disappear."

The Vietnamese refugees were called "the boat people" because this was the primary escape route out of the country - often by rickety, unseaworthy boats across the South China Sea to Malaysia and the Philippines. As in The Cricket War, these refugees were attacked by sea pirates, often the boats sank with considerable loss of life, or they were captured by the Vietnamese and towed back to land to end up in re-education camps. 

Tho Pham's experience fleeing Vietnam mirrors that of most other Vietnamese refugees. The wooden boat was barely seaworthy and was overloaded with over seventy people, many who quickly became "sick, tired, hungry and scared." They were exposed to the scorching sun, the cold at night and violent storms. During Tho's journey, his boat was attacked daily by pirates, who robbed them of food and any valuables. Later attacks saw the pirates leave some food and water for the refugees. As in the book, Tho was fortunate to have survived multiple pirate attacks, even hiding on one of the pirate boats! He was rescued by the Cap Anamur, a German ship dedicated to help Vietnamese refugees, and brought to a refugee camp.

The Cricket War captures all of the terror and suffering the refugees experienced but it also portrays the resiliency and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people. For example, the refugees devise a way to catch fish and are able to cook their catch on the charcoal stove on the boat. They actively help one another, working together to try to survive. The novel, written for young readers is never graphic in recounting life under the Communists in Vietnam, nor in describing the pirate attacks, while still conveying what life was like in these circumstances. 

Canada was one country that took in many Vietnamese refugees. They have repaid our country many times over by contributing in almost every area of life in Canada. Many like Tho, were sponsored by individuals and church groups. 

The authors have included a map of Vietnam and neighbouring countries as well as a Pronunciation Guide to Vietnamese names and words. The Cricket War is highly recommended.

Book Details:

The Cricket War by Tho Pham & Sandra McTavish
Toronto: Kids Can Press Ltd.
160 pp.

Stars of the Night by Caren Stelson

Stars of the Night relates the incredible story of Nicholas Winton and the Czech kindertransport.

In 1938 Czechoslovakia, life for young children in the old city of Prague was good. There were picnics in the park with dark bread with cheese and slices of their mother's sweet honey cake. In the winter, skating on the rivers was followed by a trip to the local coffeehouses for hot cocoa with whipped cream. The children, who were Jewish and eight, nine and ten years old played with friends who were mostly not Jewish. This didn't matter to them. They attended school. Prague was a peaceful city.

But in November of that year, things began to change. Tent camps were set up outside the city, filled with people, who the children were told, were refugees. In Germany, the stores and synagogues of Jews were vandalized and burned. The people in the tents were seeking safety. Soon the Jewish children of Prague found they were being yelled at too. Their parents began to worry, but were too busy to explain. Soon they decided they had to meet the man who was offering to make arrangements. But what man were they meeting in Prague?

In March 1939, the German army entered Prague, with their leader Hitler standing in a car, his arm straight out in front of him. Everywhere the red flags with the black zigzag were hung.

When the childrens' fathers received replies to their letters, the packing of suitcases began. The children were told they were taking a trip to England. And they were told, "There will be times when you'll feel lonely and homesick. Let the stars of the night and the sun of the day be the messenger of our thoughts and love."

The childrens' journey beganat Prague's Wilson Railway Station. The train station was filled with mostly Jewish families who were saying tearful goodbyes to their children as they boarded the trains. At the German border, the children alone, on their train without their parents were afraid of the gruff German police who checked travel documents and searched suitcases. From Germany they travelled through the Netherlands to the English Channel where they boarded boats. After another train ride in England, the children arrived in London where they were welcomed by the English families who would care for them. The children didn't know that the man their parents had written to was a man in London who had made this all possible. 

In England, they soon learned that war had broken out and as the years passed they saw pictures of people being made to wear yellow stars, and being forced into cattle cars on trains and sent to terrible places. Were their parents safe at home in Prague? They didn't know. When the war ended, many of the children were much older, seventeen and eighteen and were able to travel back to Prague to search for their parents. They soon realized that their parents were gone, that they were some of the people put on the cattle cars and sent away.  Many years passed, the children grew up, married and had their own children.

Then one day a scrap book was found with the names and photographs of children, their passports and letters and a plan of escape. In the scrapbook was also the name of the man who organized all this - Nicholas Winton. The children, now older adults, finally met him to thank him.

Discussion

Stars of the Night tells the story from the perspective of  669  brave children, who made the journey from Czechoslovakia to Great Britain just as Hitler began his rampage across Europe. As children, at the time, they didn't really know what was happening in their communities, and in the world at large. They were told they were being sent away, but they couldn't possibly understand what that really meant. These children were part of the larger kindertransport - an attempt to save the children of Jewish parents from inevitable death. One person determined to do that was Nicholas Winton. 

Nicholas Winton was born in 1909 in West Hampstead to parents of German Jewish ancestry. He worked as a stockbroker. In 1938, Winton's life was about to change forever. Germany had taken over areas of Czechoslovakia that were predominantly German-speaking, called the Sudetenland. This was allowed by the Munich Agreement. After this, in November, the Nazis conducted an organized attack on Jewish citizens in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland in what became known as Kristallnacht. As a result, Jewish refugees from these areas began to arrive in Czechoslovakia, on the outskirts of Prague.

Due to this attack, the British government decided to allow children under the age of seventeen from Germany and other areas annexed by Germany, to enter Great Britain. The requirements were that they have a foster family willing to take them in and that there were certain financial commitments made.

It was at this time in December, 1938 that Nicholas Winton's friend, Martin Blake asked him to visit Czechoslovakia instead of travelling to Switzerland for a ski trip. Winton arrived in Czechoslovakia as an associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, an organization created in response to the refugee crisis in Prague. There he met Doreen Wariner who arranged for him to visit refugee camps filled with Jews and political opponents of the Nazis.

Winton knew of the Kindertransport to rescue Jewish children from Germany and Austria, and he decided to organize a similar operation for Czech Jewish children. He first began organizing from his Prague hotel room and then in an office. Winton soon had thousands of distraught parents attempting to apply. He returned to England to raise money for the transport of Jewish children to England.

The first kindertransport organized by Winton from Czechoslovakia left Prague on March 14, 1939. Seven more transports would follow, these by train and ship, as portrayed in Stars of the Night. When Germany invaded Poland, and Great Britain declared war on Germany, the transports ended. Nicholas Winton's remarkable efforts remained hidden until his wife Grete discovered a scrapbook with the names and photographs of the children he saved. In 1988, the year the scrapbook was discovered, the children, now adults, were finally able to meet the man who saved them, on a British TV show.

Author Caren Stelson, who is Jewish, focused on five children from the Kindertransport in her story, giving each a different colour that is consistent throughout. Sisters Eva and Vera Diamantova wear orange and red respectively. Eva and Vera were ten and fifteen-years-old when they left their parents on July 20, 1939 and boarded the Czech Kindertransport to England. Vera would use the diary her father gave her, to write about her experiences and to write down the words her mother told her, about the stars of the night and the sun of the day being the messenger of their thoughts and love for her. Vera remained in England becoming a writer while Eva moved to New Zealand and became a nurse.

Brothers Josef and Ernest Schlesinger are portrayed wearing dark blue and light blue respectively.  Josef was eleven and Ernest, nine-years-old when they left Bratislava to travel to England. Sadly, Josef and Ernest's parents did not survive the Holocaust. Canadians will know Joe Schlesinger as a famous foreign correspondent for CBC. Renata Polgar wears green in Stars of the Night. She was only eight-years-old when she left her parents in her hometown of Brno to live with the Daniels family in Britain. She remembered happy times with this family. Renata was one of only five children whose parents both survived the Holocaust.

The illustrations in Stars of the Night were created by artist Selina Alko with acrylic paint, colored pencil and collage. 

Stars of the Night is a picture book that introduces the Czech kindertransport to younger readers in a simple manner, allowing for further exploration and learning about this event and the remarkable Nicholas Winton who orchestrated one aspect of it. His story demonstrates how one person can make a significant difference in the lives of many. As Joe Schlesinger remarked about Nicholas Winton, "This is the man who gave me the rest of my life."

Book Details:

Stars of the Night by Caren Stelson
Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books 2023

Courage To Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust by Neal Shusterman

In Courage to Dream, five historical fantasy stories are presented by award-winning author, Neal Shusterman.. 

In He Opens A Window, three sisters, Anna, Gretchen and Katja are in hiding in an upper room in Frau Muller's house. The secret room is hidden behind a bookcase and Frau Muller keeps the door locked. Every day a delivery book brings food which she brings to the girls. One day the delivery boy is late, held up by a parade of German soldiers of to the battlefront. After making his delivery to Frau Muller, he notices that the upper middle window of her house is missing!

That night when Anna wakes up and opens the curtains she sees an amazing sight: a brilliant sky filled with stars and suns. The next day the delivery boy brings more food from Herr Baumann, the grocer, to Frau Muller. However, Baumann has seen him stealing chocolate bars. Enraged, Baumann who promised the boy's parents to care for him, refuses to pay him and tells him he will be joining the Hitler Youth.

Meanwhile, the three girls eat the chocolate bars in their secret room. They tell Anna they also have seen the strange sights out the window. When Anna opens the curtains, this time they see islands floating in the sky above Hamburg. Anna tells them they cannot tell anyone and that the curtains must stay closed. 

Disaster strikes when Frau Muller picks up papers approved by Consul Ho for Shanghai but is hit by a truck on her way home. The girls' only connection to the outside world is lost and locked in their room upstairs they begin to starve. When they open the curtain, they see a devastated city of Hamburg. 

The delivery boy, now in the Hitler Youth, is questioned and pressured by the Gestapo to reveal who he's been supplying food . He is tricked into revealing the house and the soldiers break into Frau Muller's home. When Anna hears the soldiers climbing the stairs, she devises a plan to protect the girls using the magic window. 

In Legend Speaks of a Hero: The Golem of Auschwitz, the Jewish myth of the Golem comes to life.  The Golem was "a man formed from clay, infused with the name of God and inscribed with a brand of truth", called to life in the 16th century by Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel. The Golem came to the rescue of Jews in the city of Prague. Legend is that he either ran away or crumbled into earth once the special attributes given to him by the Rabbi were removed.

Duvid had heard about the Golem but a blow to his head had hurt his memories and thoughts. In Auschwitz some of the prisoners have heard the Golem came to Treblinka and despite the Nazis attempting to gas him and burn him, he survived and feed everyone. However, others believe this is a lie. The Rabbi believes that it is good to have hope, even if it is false hope. 

Trains arrived daily, packed to bursting with most people who were made to walk to the Birkenau two miles behind Auschwitz, to their deaths. One day a prisoner named Ben attacks a guard who had just beaten another prisoner. Ben is shot in the head in front of everyone. At night, Duvid is awakened to see something punching its way into the Nazi soldiers barracks. Duvid is awoken by the Rabbi who tells him to get back inside. At dawn, all the prisoners are lined up and told that an officer is missing. Duvid tells the Nazis that the Golem is responsible but they think he is joking.

When the prisoners are lined up for inspection to be send to Birkenau, to the gas chambers, Duvid learns his true identity and acts to free some of the prisoners.

In Spirits of Resistance, Baba and Izbushka watch as intruders invade their forest: a boy, Yosef and a girl, Hannah are being pursued by Nazi soldiers. They are found by Abe, a soldier of the Resistance who takes them to his camp deep in the forest. Yosef and Hannah escaped a transport to a death camp.

In the camp, Hannah tells Yosef she saw a house moving through the woods, and an old woman flying in a bowl. A resistance fighter tells her that was Baba Yaga who roams the forests of Eastern Europe, and eats little children. During the night, Yosef and Hannah are awoken to see the Fools of Chelm capturing the moon in a barrel.

The next day the Resistance plans to attack a train travelling to Treblinka, to save as many people as possible. Baba and Izbushka watch the attack and then confront Yosef and Hannah back in the resistance camp. Hannah tells Baba they want her help to fight the Nazis. After giving the children a piece of meat from Ibushka's left leg, Baba visits the resistance camp later that night and tells them she will help them. To aid her efforts, she enlists the help of the Chelmites. Meanwhile, the Nazis are preparing to lead a major offensive against the resistance fighters in the forest. But with the help of Baba, Ziz, Isbushka and the Chelmites, the Nazis have little chance.

An old family heirloom saves lives in Exodus. Jory Svedberg and Soren are friends even though Jory is Jewish and Soren is Lutheran. They simply consider themselves Danes. Denmark is under Nazi occupation but it wasn't until the summer of 1943 that they began to plan to deport Danish Jews to camps. One night when Soren stays for dinner at Jory's home, Jory's mother complains about how the curtain rod is always tearing their curtains. But Mr. Svedberg tells her it is a family heirloom, the staff of Moses. Jory reminds his mother it brings plagues and doesn't clean his room!

As the German army floods more soldiers into Denmark, the peaceful occupation ends. On August 29, 1943, the Danish government resigns as rumors suggest that the Danish Jews would be deported to concentration camps. Jews in Copenhagen began to flee or go into hiding. Then the Nazis come for Jory's family. But Jory has no intention of going with them. Picking up the rod, he quickly knocks out all three Nazi soldiers. But this is just beginning as Jory uses the rod to save Copenhagen's Jews and get them to safety across the Oresund Sound, separating Denmark and Sweden.

The Untold is a story of lives and a world that could have been. Caitlin's Grandmother Ida is dying. Caitlin loves her grandmother but is scared to see her because it means confronting death. Her grandmother tells her there are many stories that remain untold. She gives Caitlin a box and tells her to open it when she is feeling strong and when her heart is ready. After this, Caitlin's grandmother dies.

Puzzled and driven by curiosity about the unique gift, Caitlin finally opens the box weeks later. Inside, she finds a crystalline seashell. When Caitlin places the shell to her ear she hears hundreds of voices. When she goes downstairs for dinner, Caitlin is shocked to see a much larger dining room table and sees two strange boys in the living room. Caitlin is told they are Grandma Ida's grandnephews. Her mother tells her she should know this based on the family tree she did last year. But when Caitlin pulls out the family tree from her desk, she sees that is has many more branches than what she remembers.  When she lifts the crystalline shell to her ear again, she hears silence. 

Upon returning to the dining room, Caitlin finds everything as she expects with just herself, her brother and mother. And the family tree is as she remembers. The next day sees her not only experience a different home but also school is different. There are new kids she doesn't know and her history book states that World War II ended in 1942 with Germany not even in the war. When she shows her best friend Adam the shell, he disappears. Putting the shell back to her ear, Caitlin again hears the voices and she is back into the altered time line when she arrives home. There she learns that a brick has been thrown through a window in their house, and that anti-Semitism is on the rise in America. Her large family talks about emigrating to Palestine, and Israel doesn't yet exist. Not being able to deal with this Caitlin puts the seashell to her ear and she is back in her own timeline. She promises herself to leave it there until the 4th of July celebrations when she finds she is missing the large family in the alternate timeline. 

Using the seashell again, Caitlin returns to that timeline, a house filled with many family, "to be surrounded by a family you never had." But talk is about a book written by a congressman, on the front cover the Nazi symbol on the American flag. Horrified, Caitlin encounters her grandmother who explains what has happened and why she gave her the crystalline seashell.

Discussion

Courage To Dream is another very unique book by author Neal Shusterman. In this graphic novel, Shusterman who is an American Jew, has written "fantasy stories with a Holocaust theme". Most of the stories are a mashup of Jewish history during the Holocaust and Jewish folklore. In his Imagination and the Unimaginable note at the back of the novel, Shusterman mentions that writing from this perspective was both exciting but uncomfortable and asks, "Where is the intersection of fantasy and the grim reality of murdered millions?"

As the author notes, "These are stories of wish fulfillment where the tragedy lies in the fact that they can never be fulfilled." How many Jewish men, women and children imagined the Golem or some other hero coming to their rescue in the death camps? How many hidden Jews wished to fly out the window of their secret hideaway to a glorious world of freedom and safety? How many survivors of the Holocaust wondered what might have been had parents and siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, husbands and wives survived?  As he wrote his stories, Shusterman began to realize the stories were "..a unique way of addressing the Holocaust and perhaps engaging readers who might not otherwise go there."

In the last story, The Untold, Shusterman tackles the idea of a world where the Holocaust never happened in the 1940's but instead could possibly happen in the twenty-first century. In the Untold, the main character, Caitlin discovers a huge family in an alternate timeline because World War II ended in 1942, before the implementation of Hitler's "Final Solution" - the systematic murder of European Jews. Her huge family is the result of people living to produce the succeeding generations. 

In that alternate timeline Caitlin wanted to believe that a world without the Holocaust was a better one, but instead she finds it is just as flawed as her own time, maybe even worse. When she confronts her Grandmother Ida in that timeline she tells her granddaughter, "The world that might have been always looks glorious at first but there are twists and turns in its spiral and depths that no one can see." Caitlin realizes that her grandmother gave her not the choice to live in an alternate world but a vision, enabling her to understand who she is mourning, when she remembers the Holocaust. 

The unique stores are told primarily by the wonderful artwork of illustrator Andres Vera Martinez who researched historical photographs so he could "...accurately depict clothing, architecture, uniforms, and even landscapes of the time." He also did considerable art history research into the various aspects of Jewish folklore/  The panels are set in a somber tan tone. Many of the illustrations are rich with detail and capture the fantastical element of the stories being told while also portraying historical events.

Shusterman who is known for his fantasy and dystopian novels,  has also included an extensive Bibliography and a Note about the Hebrew Letters In This Book. The first five letters of the Hebrew alphabet appear at the beginning of each story and are relevant to the story. Courage To Dream is a book that twelve years in the making, but rich in themes for readers and students to explore.

Book Details:

Courage To Dream: Tales of Hope In The Holocaust by Neal Shusterman
New York: Graphix, an Imprint of Scholastic Inc.  2023

Obaasan's Boots by Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro

Charlotte and her mother, Masumi, are travelling from their home in Vancouver to Toronto to visit Masumi's mother- Charlotte's grandmother . On the flight out of British Columbia, Charlotte's mother switches from her Japanese name of Masumi to her English name of Mary, something that both puzzles and annoys Charlotte. Charlotte who is half Japanese, lives with her parents and brother in Vancouver. She also has family in Germany.

At her grandparents home in Toronto, Charlotte meets her many aunts and uncles, and her cousins. Charlotte's cousin, Lou is a year and a half younger and the one she knows the best. Lou, like Charlotte and all their cousins, is half Japanese. She lives in an apartment with her mother, and visits her father and grandparents on evenings and weekends. Lou's Grandma Donnelly lives on a farm outside London, Ontario. 

Both girls have heard their Japanese family talk about the past, when Japanese Canadians were "evacuated" during the war and how they lost everything. In the dining room while eating pan fried salmon, sushi, snow peas with bacon and plain rice, the two girls listen as grandma notes that "...almost everything from back then is gone. Their house, our first home, all our things. It's all gone...lost." 

Lou knows more than Charlotte about what happened but not a lot. She doesn't know the story of her family's past, why they had to move or how everything was lost. During Lou's trip with her father, Koki (Richard) to British Columbia last year, she met family from all over the province and came to realize that this is where her Japanese grandparents are from. The next day Charlotte and Lou arrive at their Japanese grandma's house to help her with her garden which is behind her house. In the garden, Grandma begins telling the story of her family, and that of Charlotte and Lou's. The story flashes back to decades before, beginning in 1928.

Grandma's father came to North America to help build the American railway, while her mother came to Canada to earn money to send home to her family in Kumamoto, Japan where they had an orange farm. After meeting and marrying in Canada, her parents settled on Sea Island located in the Fraser River. When Grandma lived there it was an island dotted with farms. Today it is an airport.

In 1928, and Hisa (Charlotte and Lou's grandma) and her sister Jeanne walk to their school on Sea Island. Their village on the island is small and is both a fishing and cannery town. Hisa's mother works at the  Acme Cannery Company. Their mother saves every penny she can. Hisa's father wants to quit fishing and work for the lumber mill and he wants Hisa to come cook for his work crew so they can send more money back to Japan. Hisa learns from her mother that they send money back to Japan because her family paid for her to come to Canada to earn money to save their farm in Japan. Hisa's mother tells her about the farm back in Japan, the mikan blossoms on the trees in the orchard, the ocean sunsets, and how they would "gather around the table on tatami mats to eat together." 

By 1930, almost everyone in their village works in the cannery. Hisa sometimes works in the cannery on holidays. Her father now has his own fishing boat. Her mother also works at the cannery but the money she earns can only be spent in the company store and can't be sent back to Japan. To earn real money she cooks and cleans for wealthy families on the mainland." and helps harvest crops for local farms.  Hisa's older brother Toshi works at the cannery, while Hisa, Jeanne, Isi and Sam all attend school. Tragedy strikes when Toshi falls ill and dies suddenly from appendicitis. His death is devastating to the family but Hisa's father tells her, "Shikata ga nai" which means "it cannot be helped." 

During the winter of 1930, Hisa's father sells his fishing boat and begins to work full time in the lumber industry. This means working far up the Fraser River and not seeing the family for long periods of time. He has to do this kind of work because there are not many jobs open to Japanese people as they cannot be doctors, lawyers, accountants, or work for the government. Japanese are not even allowed to vote. In the winter of 1932, Hisa and her siblings do their chores, attend school but also take any paid work they can to make up for the loss of Toshi's income. The Great Depression sets in and some families lose their farms. Hisa's father broke his leg and can't come home this year. During the summer of 1932, Hisa and her sister Jeanne work on a strawberry farm up north, picking berries.

In 1933, Hisa finally finishes Grade 8 and school. She won't be attending high school as there is no school nearby. Instead Hisa goes to live with the Bowers in Kerrisdale, to cook, clean and care for their children. The Bowers pay her well and treat her well. Life begins to change with the family (her parents, Jeanne, Takeo, Sam and Isi) only home together on Sundays.  Meanwhile with her parents both working, they are able to buy their first house in 1934 in Marpole in New Westminster across the river from Sea Island.

In the summer of 1939, still living at the Bowers, Hisa is introduced to Koichiro, the cousin of the lady from the Japanese Language School. Koichiro was born in the United States. His  father was a sheriff in Colorado and his mother was a picture bride who came from Japan. Koichiro was sent to Japan to Hiroshima where some of his family still live, to attend school. When his father died,  he returned to New Westminster, to care for his mother and brothers and sisters.

By late 1940, Hisa and Koichiro now engaged, marry on a sunny autumn day. Meanwhile across the ocean in Europe, war rages. They are reminded of this when a parade of soldiers marches down Columbia Street. Hisa and Koichiro move in with his family in New Westminster. In New Westminster, there is a large Japanese community, with a Buddhist Church, a Japanese United Church, Japanese stores, and a Japanese language school. Koichiro and his brother Roy work in the lumber mills, his sister Masako has a dressmaking shop. In the spring Hisa plants a small garden of snow peas, beans and spinach from seeds her mother gave her.

Then in December 1941, with Hisa expecting their first child, they learn the Japanese army has bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. naval base in Hawai'i. Hisa, Koichiro and other Japanese Canadians in their community are worried it will be like 1907 again. At that time, nine thousand people stormed Chinatown and Japantown, beating people, looting stores and destroying homes. 

Events move quickly from this point on. The next day all Japanese fishing boats are seized, Japanese schools are closed, and Japanese newspapers shut down. At night lights must be turned off or windows covered with thick black paper. "The lantern at the Japanese War Memorial in Stanley Park was extinguished soon after the bombing, the loyal sacrifice of the Japanese soldiers forgotten." 

Meanwhile Canadian soldiers are sent to fight Germany, Italy and Japan.

 

Before Christmas, anyone of Japanese heritage must register as enemy aliens. In the New Year of 1942, "all men of Japanese origin between eighteen and forty-five years old has to move to labor camps away from the coast." Hisa, pregnant wonders "What will I do without Koichiro? And what will happen to my brothers? Or Roy, the gentle soul who likes to sing and feed the stray black cat...." Then the Canadian government orders everyone of " the Japanese race" including, women, children and the elderly to be "evacuated". 

Expecting her first child, Hisa and her family along with thousands of other Japanese Canadians struggle to understand what this will mean. What will happen to their homes and businesses? What will happen to their sons and husbands and grandfathers? Will their family be separated? When will they be able to return home?

As Charlotte and Lou listen to their grandmother's story, they begin to reconsider their own views on their culture, their identity and how the past has shaped the present and the future.

Discussion

Obaasan's Boots tells the story of one Japanese Canadian family's experience during World War II. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December of 1941, Canada moved quickly to declare any person of Japanese heritage as an "enemy alien" and to remove all of their rights to property, employment and to incarcerate them in internment or prison camps.

Cousins Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro had heard bits and pieces of their family's life during World War II at family get-togethers, but the cousins never really asked questions about the past. When they did, they were told, "Shikata ga nai" or it cannot be helped. Bridger, now a teacher-librarian grew up on the West Coast, apart from her beloved grandparents who had moved away from the West Coast and lived in Toronto. When their grandmother, Hisa Okihiro passed away in 2019, they realized the opportunity to hear her story was lost and might be forgotten, so they set out together to uncover that story by sleuthing through family documents, photographs, archives and directories. What they found was a story of determination, resiliency, and courage in the face of fear, discrimination, and injustice. 

Their research began with the  discovery of  Koichiro and Hisa's wedding guest book. With help from the New Westminster Museum and Archives, they searched censuses and city directories to map their family's past. It was a 1983 newspaper article by Koichiro in The Canada Times that shed light on their family's experiences during the Second World War.

Faced with forced expulsion from their homes in 1942, Koichiro and other Japanese-Canadians formed a group called the New Westminster and District Japanese Housewives Association. Koichiro was secretary of the group whose purpose was to advocate on behalf of their community. In a letter written by Koichiro and  four other men of the Association to local Japanese Canadian families, he outlines what they were experiencing. The five men and five women of the Association advocated for keeping families together and to that end, have them move to an old gold rush town named Kaslo, rather than the dirty, smelly stables of Hastings Park where many other Japanese Canadians were being held.

 Obaasan's Boots  opens with alternating narratives by Charlotte and Lou, two cousins who meet up in Toronto with their families to visit their Japanese grandmother, Hisa Okihiro. As the two cousins are helping their grandmother in her extensive backyard garden, they learn their family story.  Hisa Okihiro tells her granddaughters  Lou and Charlotte what happened to her as young wife and new mother as the Japanese Canadian community of New Westminster were declared enemy aliens, stripped of their property, their civil rights, due process and incarcerated. Hisa's narrative is interspersed between Lou and Charlotte's thoughts about what their beloved grandmother is telling them. 

Hisa's narrative describes what it was like for Japanese Canadians in the prewar period. She tells Charlotte and Lou how they are not allowed to speak Japanese in school and how a slip results in her being punished before her classmates.

The novel describes scenes that are especially heartbreaking: the Ishii family being forced to leave their home immediately when police showed up during dinner and their last views of their home being the still-warm dinner on the table and people breaking into their home, stealing their possessions. Koichiro tells Hisa that he was told their son, Koki must have a  "Canadian name" (he chooses Richard as it is the name of an English king), register their property and entrust all their property and bank accounts to the government with no proof of ownership.  

What must it have been like for Hisa forced to choose between her prized possessions like their family photo albums and her wedding dress, and more practical items like her sewing machine. After learning what happened to the Ishii family, Hisa and Koichiro hide their possessions in their home in built-in bookcases and plaster over them and leave other things stored at the Japanese Language School or the Buddhist Church where they hope they will be safe. As it turns out, the government sells off almost everything, including their home, without their permission. 

It's heartbreaking to learn that all their "furniture stored in the basement of the Buddhist Church was chopped up for firewood less than a year after we left...I think of the beautiful dining room table where I served futomaki to family in our home in New Westminster after our wedding. The curio cabinet where we displayed out tea set from Koichiro's aunt in Japan and other pretty trinkets. These things that made up our lives. Firewood?"

After all of this, Hisa and her family along with her New Westminster community are sent to Kaslo, an old gold rush town, leaving behind almost everything they own. Despite this, Hisa and many of her community find the resiliency and determination to try "to live with purpose" as Hisa describes it. Hisa begins gardening with the help of a kindly neighbour in Kaslo and the Japanese Canadians demonstrate their remarkable resourcefulness and determination by forming schools for their children, as well as many different clubs. Hisa also comes to see the beauty in Kaslo, noting the calming blue of Kootenay Lak, "its shores sprinkled with wild pink sweet peas and indigo chicory flowers."

One interesting aspect of Hisa's narrative is the reaction of the Japanese Canadians to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not many historical fiction novels about the internment of Japanese Canadians explore this aspect of the war. Koichiro's family along with aunts and uncles, lived in Hiroshima. Hisa and Koichiro learn that Hiroshima is "completely flattened". When Japan finally surrenders, and Canadians celebrate, Hisa along with other Japanese Canadians are devastated. "But to me, it felt like people were celebrating the deaths of thousands of people. Of Koichiro's family..." At the time, many people felt that the dropping of the atomic bombs was justified. However, with the passage of time, that decision has been called into question, given the tremendous devastation and deaths the bombs caused.

In many respects, the treatment of Japanese Canadians during World War II is reminiscent of the treatment of Indigenous Canadians by the Canadian government and by Canadians. In their Authors' Note at the back of the novel,  Bridger and Okihiro write "We hope remembering this history will help us all be more accepting and work to prevent injustices in the present and future. This is especially important because the treatment of Japanese Canadians during the war is not the only example of those in power in Canada abusing people's rights. We think of the Chinese Head Tax, the Komagata Maru, the demolition of Africville, and most notably, the treatment of the Indigenous Peoples across the land we now call Canada."

Obaasan's Boots offers young readers two perspectives on the Japanese internment: from the Japanese Canadians through Hisa Okihiro's narrative and from the perspective of a younger generation looking back on the history of this event, through Lou and Charlotte's narratives. The authors have these young Canadians posing questions and reactions to Hisa's story that might be asked today. 

Hisa's stories cause Charlotte to re-examine her views on her mother using her Japanese name. "I complain about her Japanese name because all I want to do is fit in." Listening to her grandmother's stories makes her wonder why she doesn't have a Japanese name. And later on, she reconsiders that "Maybe Mom chose to use her Japanese name because she finally could. Maybe she's called Masumi because she wants to honor her family, who suffered so much and didn't have a choice. Maybe choosing her Japanese name is her small way of showing hope. That hearing her Japanese name will make other less common names more accepted as well...And I haven't been very kind to Mom. Masumi, I think is a beautiful name."

For Lou, having to move between the homes of her mother and father is challenging, but learning how her grandmother was able to adapt to living in Kaslo makes her consider that maybe she "...can make things meaningful and comfortable in each place for myself." Lou, who must shuttle between her two divorced parents homes, understands Grandma Okihiro's struggle to find a place to belong. "Maybe what Grandma felt is ore like when you can't go back because things have changed, the place you left doesn't exist the same way anymore."

For both Charlotte and Lou, their grandmother's stories lead them to ask many questions. Lou questions how "Canadian citizens - be forced to live in barns with no toilets or showers, and to eat terrible food?" Charlotte wonders "What would happen if these stories were never told? People silenced, the past forgotten. Would something like this happen again? To a different group of people? In another place or time?"

Obaasan's Boots is a poignant, short novel that successfully brings the reality of the Japanese internment to young readers and asks them to seriously think about what happened over eighty years ago and to consider how they would have responded. Would they have responded with fear? Or with understanding and love like that of Mrs. Beck?

The authors have included several black & white photographs, a Historical Timeline, and a Glossary.

Readers wishing to know more about the internment of Japanese Canadians are encouraged to check out the Landscapes of Justice: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians (https://loi.uvic.ca/narrative/#)

Book Details:

Obaasan's Boots by Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro
Toronto: Second Storey Press    2023
160 pp.

Harboring Hope: The True Story of How Henny Sinding Helped Denmark's Jews Escape The Nazis by Susan Hood

Twenty-two-year-old Henny is stealing down the dark streets of Copenhagen, leading a mother and her toddler to a safe house on Strandgade (Strand Street). Along with many other Jewish families, they wait until early morning and the opportunity to race to the lighthouse supply boat waiting on the wharf. That boat, the Gerda III, will carry them across the sea to safety in Sweden. Henny waits until the Nazi guards separate and then cues each adult to cross. The children are carried across after the adults by Henny and another crew member. Once in the Gerda III, the refugees are hidden in the damp, dark hold, behind barrels, cargo and nautical gear.

After submitting to a check by the German guards, and a friendly drink with the Germans, the Gerda sets out, down Christianshavn Canal. Its destination is the Drogden Lighthouse and then onto Sweden to drop off the Jewish passengers. It is a dangerous journey, with German patrols on the bridges, open sea, enemy patrol boats, and underwater mines.

Henny Sinding was born in 1921 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a country led by the beloved monarch, King Christian X. Henny was the middle child of Royal Danish Navy Commander Paul Sinding and his wife Elna (nicknamed Chika). Henny had an older sister Bente and a brother, five years her junior, Carsten. Henny's father was in charge of the Danish Lighthouse and Buoy Service, supervising the Drogden Lighthouse and managing the Gerda III. Henny adored her father and came to share his love of the sea. For the Sindings, having a "good inner moral compass" and being humble were important.

Henny's passions were music and dance and she aspired to attend the Royal Danish Ballet School. This was not acceptable to her parents who did not approve of the lifestyle of dancers, so Henny learned to play the accordion and to step dance. Henny attended N. Zahle's School for Girls. Her best friend was Isse (Annelise) Brune. It was Isse's father who introduced both girls to sailing. Henny soon became a proficient sailor, racing iceboats in winter, learning the Oresund Strait between Denmark and Sweden.

In 1938, when Henny was seventeen, she worked as an au pair in England, learning to speak and read English. She arrived back in Denmark in 1939 with a wider perspective on the world.  In September, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and Britain declared war on Germany. Denmark had a "non-aggression pact" with Germany, which meant they were at peace. For now.

Henny began working with her father's naval unit, the Danish Lighthouse and Buoy Service in Copenhagen. She was assigned to plot the locations for buoys and lighthouses as well as mapping safety routes. Henny also learned to become a proficient typist. Her work involved a group of close friends, Captain Ejnar Tonnesen, Engineer John Hansen, Gerhardt Steffensen and Otto Andersen.

The crew of the Gerd III set sail every morning bringing mail, books and newspapers to the lighthouse keepers at Drogden Light. It also serviced the buoys that guided ships travelling between the Baltic and North Seas. 

In 1940, when Henny was eighteen years old, the Nazis invaded Denmark on April 9 at 4:15AM. The German invasion, Operation Weserubung was over by 6AM. King Christian X agreed to cooperate as long as Denmark's right to freedom of religion was respected. Germany desired a peaceful occupation of Denmark as this meant the need for fewer soldiers to police the country. While the Dane's ran the country, the Nazis controlled agriculture and industry and set about fortifying the coastline.

Henny and Bente and their father continued to work, the Gerda III continued to sail, but life was more difficult. The Danes were not friendly to their Nazi occupiers and they wondered what would happen to Denmark's Jewish citizens. More than eight thousand Jews lived peacefully in Denmark, accepted in the country and thriving. Hitler attempted to force the Danish government and people to follow his orders but politicians resigned and students protested. King Christian X agreed to cooperate as long as Denmark's right to freedom of religion was respected.

In 1941,  the Nazis began to implement their "final solution" to the Jewish problem: murder and extermination. The attempt to have Danish Jews wear the Yellow Star failed and the Danish resistance grew. Medical students, and physicians joined the resistance movement, student unrest was country-wide. Knud Peterson and his older brother Jens, along with a cousin and two friends formed a club, the RAF club to fight back. A group of men formed the Holger Danske, named after a knight of Danish legend. 

In September of 1942, King Christian refused to acknowledge Hitler's birthday greeting in a way that the Fuhrer expected. And so the Germans replaced their white glove approach with that of an iron fist. After another year of demonstrations, sabotage and strikes, in August of 1943, Danish workers went on strike. Then on August 29, with Operation Safari, the Nazis attempted to capture the Danish navy. But the Danes had anticipated this and scuttled many of their warships, torpedo boats and submarines. Eventually Henny came to meet Jorgen Kieler, a medical student and Erik Koch Michelsen or Mix, a naval cadet. All were interested in actively resisting the Nazis. 

Werner Best, Hitler's man in Denmark, was struggling to subdue the increasing Danish resistance. To regain Hitler's favour, Best decided to suggest that they roundup all of Denmark's Jews. Hitler was pleased with this plan and the date was set: Friday, October 1, 1943, the end of the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and the Shabbat Shuvah. It was a truly evil plan because most Jews would be at home and therefore, easily captured.

The Danes had three days to save their Jewish friends and neighbours. Henny along with Jorgen, Mix and hundreds of others sprang into action. Using the Gerda III, Henny set to work planning just how the boat and its brave crew could save hundreds of Jews and transport them to safety in neutral Sweden.

Discussion

Author Susan Hood tells the story of Henny Sinding and the Danish resistance mostly through the use of free verse. Henny's story is one of incredible courage, perseverance and a touch of luck, as work in the Danish resistance was dangerous.

In Harboring Hope, Henny Sinding and the crew of the lighthouse supply boat, Gerda III worked tirelessly to save as many Jews as possible, after the Nazis decided to implement the first part of their "final solution" which was to round up all of Denmark's Jews and transport them to the concentration camps on the continent. They had three days to devise a plan, locate their Jewish neighbours who had gone into hiding, learn who to trust, hide them and then get them to safety. This required planning, organization, courage and determination, all of which Henny Sinding had in abundance.

The crew of the Gerda needed the permission of Henny's father, who was in charge of the Danish Lighthouse and Buoy Service. Twenty-two-year old Henny was able to obtain his permission to not only use the Gerda but also to relocate it simply by asking her father not to notice the boat's different sailing route. With the help of a naval cadet nicknamed Mix, and a medical student, Jorgen and his resistance group, as well as others in the underground, Henny helped locate Danish Jews,  shelter and eventually lead them onto the Gerda which then ferried them to safety in Sweden. Henny's group was able to save around three hundred people.

Harboring Hope realistically portrays life in Denmark during World War II. The Danish, unable to effectively fight the mighty German military machine, at first settled into an uneasy coexistence. Soon resistance to the Nazis grew. Hood includes several notable Danish citizens who felt deeply motivated to fight back against the Germans, including many young teens who were ashamed of their country's weak response. One was Knud Pederson and his Churchill Club. In 1940, fourteen-year-old Pederson was inspired by the resistance of the Norwegians to the Nazis. Initially he and his brother Jens along with other friends formed a club called the RAF club which undertook small acts of sabotage. When he moved to Aalborg, he formed a new club, the Churchill Club which became more deeply involved in fighting the Nazis.

Through many different forms of poetry, Hood is able to convey Henny Sinding's remarkable courage, determination and levelheadedness as well as her ability to organize. She became the focal point around which the crew of the Gerda III could effectively outwit the Nazis and really contribute to helping their Jewish countrymen.

The novel is divided into nineteen parts and employs mostly free verse to tell Henny's story. However,  in her Poetry Notes, the author writes that she also wrote other forms such as a shape poem, a sensory poem, an  ABC poem, a triolet, a nonet and elegy. Hood writes that various "poetic techniques, such as alliteration, anaphora, assonance, onomatopoeia, refrains and rhythms" were also used. This variety adds interest and aids in the storytelling.

Harboring Hope is another excellent novel by author Susan Hood. She provides her readers with a large amount of supplemental information at the back of the novel in a part titled Ship's Log. In this part there is More About Henny, Gerda III, and the Escape of the Danish Jews, Homecoming which provides information on the return of the Jews in the post-war period, What Happened to Gerda III?, Photographs which include photos of Henny, her parents, Nazis in Copenhagen, the Gerda III, and Mix, Poetry Notes, Sources, a Bibliography, and an extensive source for Quotes used in the book.

Book Details:

Harboring Hope: The True Story of How Henny Sinding Helped Denmark's Jews Escape The Nazis by Susan Hood
New York: HarperCollins Publishers    2023

352 pp.

Two Tribes by Emily Bowen Cohen

Mia Harjo Horowitz attends West Hill Jewish Community School . She and her best friend, Chloe are eating lunch when a fellow student, Justin asks Mia if she is Spanish. Annoyed, Mia tells him her father is American Indian. He then questions her as to whether she wears beads, can ride a horse or has a secret Indian name. As Mia has none of these, she wonders if she is not really Indian.

This leads Mia to wonder how she can claim to be Native if she knows nothing about Indian culture. She can't ask her Jewish mother because she doesn't like talking about Mia's father. And her father lives in Oklahoma with his new family. Mia and Chloe decide that maybe Mia can find "a book about being Native American at the library". 

At home, Mia helps her mother make challah in preparation for Shabbat on Friday night. Mia, her mother and her stepfather Roger also have Rabbi and Rebbetzin Goldfarb over the Shabbat. He helped prepare Mia for her Bat Mitvah recently. However, Mia tells her mother that she is not just Jewish, and that the students at school act as though she is different.

Not understanding her feelings, the Rabbi makes a rude joke about Indians, further upsetting Mia. Her father, Van, is a member of the Muscogee Nation. Mia's mother tells the Rabbi and his wife that Van was not true to his vows and that he now lives in Oklahoma with his new family.

When Mia receives another a cheque from her Van and his wife Sharon, she decides she might have enough money to fly to Tulsa to see her father. She will prove her dad is a good guy and that he loves her. She will also learn how to be a real Indian. However, when she tells Chloe her plan, her friend tells her that flying won't be an option if she isn't planning to tell her mother about the trip. 

With the help of Chloe, Mia plans a secret trip to Tulsa. She lies to her mother, getting her to sign a permission slip for a weekend trip with classmates, praying in synagogue, and getting her to agree to spending the night at Chloe's home. But instead of boarding the bus with her classmates, Mia hires a taxi and gets on a bus to Oklahoma. While her impromptu trip helps Mia discover in Native American identity, her deception has major repercussions for her and her extended family, highlighting issues of trust and honesty. 

Discussion

In Two Tribes, author Emily Bowen Cohen explores themes of identity, forgiveness, acceptance and reconciliation. Cohen, who is Muscogee and Jewish like her main character Mia, experienced separation from her father's Indigenous family after his death when she was nine-years-old. Fortunately for Cohen, her mother made sure that she continued to learn her Indigenous culture.

Unlike the author, in Two Tribes, Mia has little contact with her Indigenous father who lives in Oklahoma. This is the result of her parents bitter divorce: her mother's unresolved anger towards Mia's father for his infidelity and her father's self-absorbed focus on his problems and his new life. This means Mia learns only about her Jewish culture and its beautiful traditions while her Native culture is ignored. But Mia develops the desire to learn about her other "tribe", her Indigenous culture that comes from her father when she is questioned at school as to whether she is adopted. This is the "seed" that leads to Mia questioning her identity.

Correctly suspecting that her mother is unlikely to allow her to visit her father, Mia does so surreptitiously which eventually has repercussions. However, that visit to her father's home allows her the opportunity to learn about her Native culture and beliefs.

Cohen wonderfully juxtaposes Mia's Jewish and Indigenous heritages through the descriptions of food, dress and stories. At home, Mia makes challah with her mother for Shabbat. When she visits her father, she makes wild onion eggs with her cousin Nova, eats fry bread, and attends a pow wow. Mia learns about Indigenous regalia and is told the creation story of the clans. Mia also discovers that her Indigenous and Jewish cultures have something in common: the stomp dance is a form a worship done around a ceremonial fire, while in Judaism there is an eternal flame in synagogues. When she is back in Los Angeles, Mia also begins to realize that she could blend both Jewish and Indigenous food. She tells Chole, "Maybe Native American and Jewish traditions can blend together as one."

Of course there are consequences to Mia's deception as both she and Chloe are punished.  After returning home, Mia is made to sit with Rabbi G and talk about what happened but this also turns into an opportunity for more growth for both Mia, her parents and the Rabbi. Telling the adults what is really in her heart, Mia explains that she is a separate person, she's not her father and she will not always make the same choices her mother has made. She tells her mother and Roger, "I'm not just a Bat Mitzvah though, because I'm also Native American. I'm a member of two tribes."  Mia also explains that in travelling to Oklahoma to visit her father, she was honouring him. This had not occurred to Rabbi G who also comes to realize how offensive his "joke" was to Mia. Happily, Mia's actions result in the reconciliation between her parents and potential for more exploration of her Native American identity.

Two Tribes acknowledges and portrays the very real struggles young people can experience growing up in two cultures. The use of the graphic novel format is very effective in portraying the two "tribes" that constitute Mia's identity because there is a visual component to her dual ethnicity. Mia looks different than most of her Jewish classmates: her darker skin leads classmates to wonder if she is adopted. The vibrant panels portray this much more effectively than words do, allowing the reader to better identify with Mia. Illustrations were done by Cohen, rendered in ink, brush, Micron pen and Photoshop with colours by Lark Pien.

Book Details:

Two Tribes by Emily Bowen Cohen

New York: Heartdrum, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers    2023

The Possible Lives of W H, Sailor by Bushra Junaid

Coastal erosion has exposed a two-hundred-year old wooden coffin on the Strait of Belle Isle. The person in the coffin was buried with their head oriented east toward Africa. The man, with good teeth and kinky hair, was young and short in stature. He was also missing his forearm. The coffin also contained a knife and pouch and a shoe. These items had the initials WH engraved on them. Who was this man and what was his story? How did he come to be buried here?

Discussion

In June 1987, a burial site near the small fishing village of L'Anse au Loup on a part of the Labrador coast was exposed. Bones, fabric and wood were exposed. Archeological investigation revealed a coffin containing a skeleton wearing a military uniform, wrapped in a shroud of a wool blanket. There was also a pouch and in the pocket of the jacket was a pocket knife with the initials WH carved into it. The lone shoe had a W carved into the sole.

Working together, an osteologist and conservator were able to determine that the remains were that of a Black man. The presence of a twenty centimeter long wooden marlinspike, a tool used to separate or join together rope, in the coffin suggests that this was a sailor. Investigators believe that WH was possibly a midshipman or the servant of a ship's officer in the early 1800s.

The Atlantic was sometimes called the Black Atlantic for the number of Black people who sailed across the ocean. Over twelve million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic in slave ships. Approximately one-fifth of all sailors in both the merchant marine and the military were people of colour, some enslaved, others free.

In The Possible Lives of WH, Bushra Junaid, wonders about the life of the Black sailor known only as WH. Her poetry narrative is filled with questions about his name, his origin, how he came to be a sailor, lose his arm, and what he saw and felt. In asking these and many other questions, Montreal-born Junaid, an author, artist and curator, takes young readers on a short trip through the earliest Black history of Canada.

Millions of West Africans were captured and forcibly transported across the Atlantic from 1526 to 1867 in what was known as the Transatlantic slave trade. This journey in the Middle Passage, was done in the festering hold of a slave ship, under such terrible conditions, that many did not survive. 

Other Blacks were born on plantations in the Caribbean or in America where they cut sugarcane, picked cotton and planted rice. On these plantations, life was no easier. Junaid, in her Background To Timeline note at the back, writes that "Caribbean slave owners bought enormous quantities of the poorest grade of Newfoundland and Labrador codfish or 'salt fish' (also called 'refuse fish' or 'Jamaica fish') to feed their enslaved workforce." The enslaved were fed poorly, among other things. When Britain was considering abolishing the slave trade in 1791, there was concern that such a move would result in the collapse of the Newfoundland fishery. Little concern existed for the enslaved and their health.

Some enslaved Africans and people of colour, escaped by enlisting in the British or American navy. Some who fought for England during the American revolution, were given land in Nova Scotia. The land was of poor quality, but they stayed, had families and became an integral part of the history of Eastern Canada. All of these are possible origins for the sailor we know today only as WH.

In asking her questions and offering possible answers, Junaid paints "...a picture of what the life of a Black sailor in the later eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries may have been like."  something we know a bit about, from the writings of Black sailors from this era. 

The author has illustrated her story with beautiful artwork done both in traditional media and digital methods.Also included are the following resources: Background:Finding WH, a Timeline, Background To Timeline, References and Resources, photographs of Artifacts Found At WH's Burial Site, and a Teachers Guide.

The Possible Lives of WH, Sailor gives voice to the past, to those people of colour, who either by choice or not, are a part of Canada's history and the making of this country.

Book Details:

The Possible Lives of WH, Sailor by Bushra Junaid
Tors Cove, NL: Running the Goat Books & Broadsides,   2022

Storm of Olympus by Claire M. Andrews

Storm of Olympus picks up where the previous novel, Blood of Troy ended. 

The Trojan War is over and Troy has been destroyed. Not only that but Daphne battled her nemesis, Nyx, who warped the mind of her beloved brother Alkaios into attacking her. The resulting battle saw the release of the Titans who had been imprisoned beneath the city by Zeus as punishment for the Titanomachy. Close to death, she was fed an ambrosia seed by Apollo unleashing her immortal powers as the daughter of the titan, Oceanus. Daphne fled the city along with others including Odysseus and his men. Now on Aeaea Island, Daphne struggles to come to terms with all she has lost: her mother, her beloved brother Alkaios, her kingdom and her queen. 

Aeaea is the prison and sanctuary of the titaness, Circe. Daphne is now a titan with the ability to control the sea and the sky. Circe encourages Daphne to use her emotions to call up her new powers, but even the pain she feels over the death of her brother Alkaios fails to work and almost leads to Daphne drowning. Meanwhile on the beach below Circe's cottage, Odysseus and his men work on rebuilding their ships.

Asleep in Circe's cottage, Daphne is awoken by screams. She races down to the beach where Circe and Odysseus are pulling bodies from the waves. One of the bodies is that of Hermes, the messenger god, who is barely alive. Circe manages to save Hermes, removing the poison of Nyx from him.

When Daphne falls asleep that night, Hypnos, the god of sleep, shows her the destruction of the Olympian gods by the Titans. She sees Hera get impaled, a dead Poseidon, the death of Demeter, Persephone and Hades. Apollo, her lover, warns Daphne to leave before she too is killed. Horrified, she watches as Apollo and Zeus are killed by the titans.  Hypnos tells Daphne she can still save them. When she awakens, Daphne tells Circe that the titans have stormed Olympus, killing the gods and have claimed Mount Olympus for themselves. She was unable to save them, but Circe tells her that's because she isn't ready yet to use her powers.

When Hermes regains consciousness, he tells Daphne that she is able to save the gods including her lover, Apollo, because they are not dead but trapped in Tartarus (the Underworld), a sort of purgatory or cage. He tells her must free the gods from the Underworld. Hermes informs Daphne that because of the curse on him, the titans will know where Daphne has fled and they will come to Aeaea. He was a spy in the titan's camp during the Trojan war. He also tells Daphne that Helen of Troy, Lykou, and Hippolyta are safe in Mount Kyllini and that in the seven months that she has been on the island, the titans have attacked Olympus, while Agamemnon's army has conquered Athens, Crete and Salamis. The Spartans have rebelled against Menelaus but likely will not defeat him. 

Eventually Odysseus and his men finish one ship and Daphne and Hermes set sail for Eleusis where they know there is still an entrance to the Underworld. During the journey there, Hermes reveals that Cronus is likely leading the titan army which includes Perses the titan of destruction, Phoibe and  Oceanus, Daphne's father. Daphne will not only have to free the gods from Tartarus, but she must also reclaim Mount Olympus and save the Garden of Hesperides. But can Daphne accept her fate, as the Storm of Olympus, to save those she loves?

Discussion

Storm of Olympus is a book of battles from beginning to end with plenty of gore and death. Andrews draws from Greek and Norse mythology to create a lengthy saga involving a secondary goddess, Daphne while incorporating many other facets of Greek mythology.

The end of the Trojan war has seen the release of the titans from their prison beneath the city of Troy. They waste no time in attacking the gods on Mount Olympus, defeating and imprisoning them in Tartarus. Their ultimate goal is to take over the world. Daphne, now a titan, is the gods' only hope of regaining Mount Olympus. But to do this she must learn to wield her immense powers over sea and sky. With the help of Hermes and the mortal, Odysseus, she journeys to Eleusis, the location of a door to the Underworld. There, after battles with sea monsters and the god Ares as well as titans, Daphne, with the help of the souls of the Underworld including her beloved brother Alkaios and her friend Theseus, frees the gods. Escaping the Underworld takes Daphne and the gods to Lemnos, the site of the resistance's camp and Hephaestus's forge. In an attempt to win the battle against the titans, Daphne is initially unsuccessful in enlisting the help of the gods of Asgard: Odin, Thor, Freyja  and Loki. This, despite her reminding the AEsir, that should the titans and gods succeed in controlling the Garden of the Hesperides, they will come for other gardens including Yggdrasil.

Eventually, Daphne along with Zeus and the other Olympians, their mortal and centaur allies engage the titans and their allies, the armies of Menelaus and Agamemnon in an epic battle on Mount Olympus. Daphne is fighting to restore balance to Mount Olympus because she, along with some of the Olympian gods and the mortals, believes the gods/titans have abused their powers. They have used the mortals, causing wars and other calamities for their amusement. Mortals like Clytemnestra, princess of Sparta also believe that the gods allowed Troy to fall, and that they have led mortals "astray with their selfish interests  for too many centuries." 

Once they take Mount Olympus, Daphne must now protect the Garden where Zeus and Poseidon have fled. The AEsir do eventually respond and come to their aid in this final battle, helping defeat Zeus, Nyx and Poseidon. Daphne explains what must happen next:

"A thousand years ago, the Garden spoke to the goddess Hecate and told her to give the Olympians and titans ambrosia, creating the immortals we know today. They were chosen as the Hesperides's protectors, to keep the power from falling into the wrong hands and destroying the world. Some - the titans - went mad with power. Over the centuries, it consumed many of the gods, too." Now the Garden has asked for new protectors, balance and sacrifice. Hecate arrives to help decide who will be the protectors, allowing the Garden to be reborn.

Storm of Olympus is plot-driven, with a wealth of battles, gore and gruesome death, but also sacrifice and heroism. There are so many characters and various monsters in the novel that unless the reader is well versed in Greek and Norse mythology, they may feel overwhelmed. Andrews, to her credit, does attempt to identify characters and beasts within the story. There is a list of characters at the back of the novel but this by no means covers every character or monster involved (for example, Perses, a recurring character is missing). This list should be more extensive, perhaps in order of appearance in the story, and placed at the front of the book. 

A subplot is the relationship between Daphne and her lover Apollo. He is the impetus for her drive to save the Olympians from Tartarus. Seeing his gruesome death at that hands of the titans fuels her rage which leads her to develop and learn to control her power over sea and sky. They are reunited after his rescue from Tartarus and survive many battles. Another storyline is the relationship Daphne has with her brothers, Alkaios who was warped by Nyx and whom Daphne killed, and Pyrrhus who considers her a Spartan traitor. She is reunited with both at various points and they each experience the power of forgiveness.

Not surprisingly, the major character, Daphne is a strong, determined, courageous immortal who risks everything to try to save those she loves. Along the way she learns to trust not only her own abilities, but her friends too.

Storm of Olympus ends happily, after many battles, hardship, suffering and sacrifice. Andrews has crafted a unique story, focusing on a minor figure in Greek mythology, Daphne, beautiful daughter of a river god, loved by Apollo. This trilogy will appeal to those adults and older teens who have a good knowledge of mythology and who grew up on the Greek and Norse myths!

Book Details:

Storm of Olympus by Claire M. Andrews
New York: Little, Brown and Company    2023
470 pp.