The Tree of Life by Elisa Boxer

It was winter in the ghetto called Terezin. There were many children in the ghetto, scared and lonely. One woman, Irma Lauscher, was secretly teaching the children to read and write, and also to celebrate Jewish holidays. She asked one of the prisoners who left the ghetto each day on work detail to smuggle in a tree sapling. He agreed even though this meant risking his life if he were caught.

When the sapling arrived, it was a comfort to the children who planted it in a pot. Eventually, the children planted the sapling in the ground within the ghetto. To keep the sapling alive, the children each shared a few drops of their precious water each day. The tree grew taller and was known as Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life.

Meanwhile, many of the children were removed from the ghetto and sent by train somewhere even worse. But those children who remained continued to water the tree. After the war and the prisoners were released, the tree was now five feet tall. Before the children left the ghetto they gave the tree one more drink and placed a sign by it that read, "As the branches of this tree, so the branches of our people." 

Over the years the tree continued to grow, a mature, silent witness to what had happened in the ghetto. Irma survived the war and send seeds from the tree all over the world. In 2007, after a flood, the tree finally succumbed. But six hundred saplings were now living throughout the world!

In 2021, a fifteen foot descendent of the tree of life was planted in New York City. There children will come to care for it and learn more about the past, the ghetto, and the teacher and the children who had hope for a better future.

Discussion

The Tree of Life is the touching story of Jewish children creating a memorial of hope in the darkest of times, when most of them would have no future.

In January, 1943, Irma Lauscher and a group of Jewish children gathered in Theresienstadt concentration camp to plant a tree. This was to celebrate the Jewish holiday called Tu B'Shvat which is called "The New Year of The Trees".

Theresienstadt, also known as Terezin, was a Nazi concentration camp and ghetto located thirty miles north of Prague in the Czech Republic. Theresienstadt was originally a fortress created in the late 18th century by Emperor Joseph II of Austria. Terezin was located within the fortress. However, during World War II, with the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Nazis converted Terezin into a Jewish ghetto and concentration camp. The ghetto held over fifteen thousand Jewish children, of which only one hundred fifty would survive. Most of these children and the Jewish adults as well, were sent to their deaths at the extermination camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz.

Unlike many other camps, Terezin prisoners were scholars, philosophers, scientists, musicians and artists. The camp was used as a propaganda tool to prove to the world that the Nazis were treated the Jewish people well. In 1943, the camp was beautified in response to a request by King Christian X of Denmark to inspect it. Named Operation Embellishment by the Nazis, the camp was cleaned, fakes shops and cafes were created and thousands deported to Auschwitz to alleviate overcrowding. When the inspection was done in June of 1944 by Danish officials they saw freshly painted rooms holding no more than three Danish Jews per room. The officials did not ask to see areas of the camp that were not part of the official tour and any questions they asked of residents were not answered. Rafael Schachter, a Czech composer, along with other Jews, was forced by the Nazis to give a repeat performance of Verdi's Requiem. He was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944  and gassed the next day. In September 1944, the Nazi's made a propaganda film titled Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet  or, Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement. 

Despite this, the children of Terezin were educated, even though it was apparent most of them would not survive. This was a ploy by the Nazis to hide the camp's true purpose. Irma Lauscher was one of the teachers. She was born in Hermanuv Mestec in 1904 and went on to earn a teaching degree from Chales University in Prague. In 1932 she married Jiri Lauscher. They had a daughter, Michaela in 1936.  Irma continued teaching even after they were deported to Terezin in 1942, helping the Jewish children learn about Jewish history and traditions.

The seeds for the tree were smuggled in by an unknown prisoner who worked outside the camp. In the spring of 1943 the tree was planted in one of the Terezin yards. Another version has Irma bribing a Czech guard who smuggled in a sapling of a silver maple. The tree survived the war by being watered by the children of Terezin, most of whom did not survive. Irma and her family also survived. 

After the war, Irma often visited the tree at Terezin, who grew into a stout sixty foot silver maple. Unfortunately, the tree was destroyed by a flood in 2003. But by that time many saplings of the original tree grew in the United States and Israel.

Elisa Boxer tells the story of the Tree of Life in this lovely picture book with digitally created artwork by Alianna Rozentsveig. It is a gentle retelling that focuses on the sacrifice of the Jewish children, to create a symbol of hope and peace, for a future they would never have. This symbol was spread throughout the world, in the form of saplings planted in different cities. Each tree is  a reminder to children of all peoples and faiths, of the lives lost and offers a reminder to fight hatred in all its forms.

The artwork portraying life in Terezin is dark and conveys a sense of foreboding with shades of beige, brown and black while the children are shown in brighter colours. The train taking the Jewish children to their deaths in Auschwitz, belches black smoke against an ominous dark sky. In the postwar images, the background is light, conveying a sense of hope.

There is an Author's Note at the back as well as a Selected Sources section which offers readers the opportunity to explore more in-depth the story told in the book.

Book Details:

The Tree of Life. How a Holocaust Sapling Inspired the World by Elisa Boxer

New York: Rocky Pond Books    2024

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species by Dr. Michael Leach and Dr. Meriel Lland

This oversize nonfiction picture book explores Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and his ideas about the natural world that were published in his book, On The Origin of Species.

In this book, evolution is defined as "the way that living things here on Earth have changed and continue to change." It "explains why there are so many different kinds of plants and animals." This explanation comes from Charles Darwin who described his ideas in his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, published in 1859. 

This nonfiction picture book sets out to describe how naturalist Charles Darwin came to develop the idea of evolution and natural selection and explain his "big idea".

After identifying some of the great scientific thinkers in the late 1700's and early 1800's, the authors describe the early life of Charles Robert Darwin who was born in 1809. His love of studying the natural world led him to leave the study of medicine and enroll in courses to become an Anglican minister. He obtained the position of a naturalist on the HMS Beagle and journeyed to the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of South America.

 

In 1835, Darwin studied the wildlife on the various islands of the Galapagos, making records and collecting samples. When he returned home to England, Darwin married Emma Wedgwood in January, 1839. They had ten children. Over the next sixteen years, Darwin came to develop a theory as to how species change, by passing on small variations that made them better adapted to their environment. These traits eventually became common to all members of that species. This process was named "natural selection" by Darwin. Another British man, Alfred Russel Wallace also came to have a similar theory and sent his idea to Darwin.

In 1858, their idea of the theory of natural selection was presented at a scientific meeting in London. Wallace admitted that this idea was first Darwin's. This radical idea was very controversial leading to many public debates. Darwin published his theory in a book titled, On the Origin of Species in 1859. In 1871 he further developed his ideas and published a book on the evolution of humans called The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Because Darwin considered humans as part of the animal kingdom, he believed humans shared a common ancestor with apes.

Darwin continued his thinking and research all his life, writing fourteen books and corresponding with many people regarding his ideas. He died in 1882 and is buried in Westminster Abbey, London.

From this point on, examples of natural selection in action are featured. Other concepts such as "common descent", "survival of the fittest", "the struggle for life", and sexual selection are presented. How island life forms unique organisms, Darwin's tree of life and the interdependence of species are also discussed. The authors also incorporate pages about convergent evolution, the fossil record, the rise of birds, plate tectonics and how this has affected life on Earth, and some of Darwin's ideas that ultimately proved to be wrong.

Discussion

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species offers young readers a short biography of Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who posed the theory of evolution and natural selection. Darwin's ideas on how natural selection works to help species adapt better to their environment and his theory of evolution - how life on Earth may have developed over hundreds of millions of years are also discussed.

This book begins by offering some key definitions about evolution, stating that "People and species of plants and animals also change bit by bit over many generations. These processes are gradual and are the basis of evolution - or how living things change over time."  This definition is somewhat vague and doesn't explain what Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has come to embody today. The Merriam-Webster definition is probably more accurate: "the scientific theory explaining the appearance of new species and varieties through the action of various biological mechanisms (as natural selection or genetic mutation)"

It's important for children's science books to strive to be accurate. Darwin brilliantly recognized that living organisms adapt to small changes in their environment so they can better survive. He was able to  describe this with his detailed observations of various animals on the Galapagos. Drs Leach and Lland do an excellent job of presenting this evidence by describing Darwin's finches from the Galapagos and the rainforest frogs in Thailand. 

But Darwin also had another part of his theory which the authors describe as  "Evolution also helps us to understand how groups of animals and plants become extinct, and how new groups emerged - including humans."  In other words, Darwin believed that evolution could explain how new species come about, a process he believed happened gradually, through small changes over a vast period of time. To prove this many, transitional forms must be found to show the development from one species to a completely new one. As Leach and Lland do mention, transitional fossils are not common, making such proof difficult. They present the evolution of whales from a land ancestor  called Indohyus as one example and also the belief today, that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs based on the discovery of dinosaur fossils with feathers, and what is considered an intermediary, Archaeopteryx. 

Leach and Lland also present some of the problems Darwin considered but was unable to solve during his lifetime. One was how plants and animals passed on their characteristics to their offspring. We now know since the discovery of DNA in 1953, that traits are passed on through segments of DNA called genes which are inherited from the parents of an organism. Genes describe protein chains, amino acid by amino acid.  During reproduction DNA is copied but often the duplication is not perfect. These flaws lead to mutations. Most major mutations are fatal, as the work of the German geneticists Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus demonstrated. When Darwin posed evolution, he knew nothing about DNA, amino acids, proteins and inheritance. Had he known, would he have believed that random mutations that occurred early enough in development to affect the body plan of the organism - could drive macro-evolution? Today, many microbiologists and geneticists understand that minor mutations do not create significant evolutionary change as Darwin proposed. And major mutations are usually fatal to an organism. Leach and Lland describe DNA and confidently state that these mutations which they describe as "faults" are what "...create the variants that drive evolution." They do not explore the question that microbiology presents regarding evolution: since genes contain information that is coded in various combinations of the twenty amino acids, where did that biochemical information initially originate? Did the information come from random mutations? Or from some other source? 

The second problem Darwin couldn't solve was "how a species could appear in different places around the Earth." We now know that the Earth is a dynamic system in which the crust is made up of  tectonic plates that are constantly moving. The continents as we currently know them were arranged very differently in the past, into one supercontinent called Gondwana.

One interesting spread in the book is titled The Slow March of Evolution in which Earth's history is presented in the form of a twenty-four hour clock instead of using the geologic time scale such as Cambrian, Ordovician etc . The appearance of different forms of life are assigned a time ( for example, 04.20 First Single Cell Life appears). One issue with Darwin's evolution is how to explain things like the incredible emergence of life at the beginning of the Cambrian Period - known as the "Cambrian explosion." Using the clock instead of the geologic time scale means this "explosion of new life forms" is not as readily apparent.

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species offers an overview on the topic of evolution that may encourage young readers to further explore the ideas featured here.  This book could have been made much more engaging with the use of photographs of some of the major characters such as Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and Samuel Wilberforce, photographs of the Galapagos Islands and of the unique animals such as the long nosed horn frog mentioned in the book, as well as the use of maps and the geologic time scale. There is a small glossary at the back which could have been expanded. In addition, there is no information offered on the authors or their credentials. 

Book Details:

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species by Dr. Michael Leach and Dr. Meriel Lland

London: Arcturus Publishing Ltd.     2024

64 pp.

Four Years Trapped In My Mind Palace by Johan Twiss

Fourteen-year-old Aaron Greenburg has been locked in his mind for the last two years. He and his two friends, Mike and Leon had gone swimming in the "murky waters of Dingleberry Creek in Bradley, California during a scorching July afternoon. It was his last day in Bradley before he and his parents, Robert and Linda moved to a city in the Bay area, Concord. Aaron and his friends spent "the day flying from the rope swing into the old swimming hole at Dingleberry Creek." Three days later, Aaron was in a new city, without his friends and so ill he couldn't move at all. At San Francisco General, Dr. MacPhearson diagnosed Aaron with a rare form of cryptococcal meningitis. Although his parents weren't aware of where Aaron and his friends had been, Aaron knew that he had contracted this bacterial illness from Dingleberry Creek where eucalyptus trees had been planted around the swimming hole.

Dr. MacPhearson told Aaron's parents that he was "as good as dead. He is completely unresponsive and in a vegetative state. We highly doubt he can hear or even recognize you and that the meningitis has caused severe and irreparable brain damage."  This is shocking to Aaron who can hear everything being said about him but is unable to respond in any way. His parents attempted to care for him at home but with both of them being in their sixties, after three months it simply too much. His mother was forty-six when she had Aaron, a surprise baby! Now he lives in Restwood Suites Senior Care Center in Walnut Creek. 

At Restwood, Aaron is fed through a tube in his stomach. His only form of entertainment at first looking at a painting of a bowl of fruit on a table. Aaron pulls this painting into a magical world he creates, called his mind palace, a sort of castle - where he and the fruit have adventures.  Eventually Nurse Penny donated a black and white television with a VHS recorder and two tapes of Sesame Street from 1976. Except it's now 1987!

But Aaron's life changes drastically once again, when an elderly man, Solomon Felsher is placed in his room. Solomon is a former jazz musician, who is Jewish and who has dementia and needs constant supervision. His daughter Talia helps him get settled in and promises to bring Betty, his saxophone the next time she visits in a few weeks.

Once they are alone, Aaron makes the astonishing discovery that Solomon can hear his thoughts in his head. This means for the first time in two years, Aaron can communicate with another person. Over the next few weeks, Aaron shares conversations with Solomon and discovers he can only hear Aarons thoughts, observations and questions that Aaron directs towards him as if in conversation. If Aaron is just thinking thoughts he can keep them private. This is a relief to both Aaron and Solomon.

However, Aaron also discovers that when Solomon is having a dementia episode, he gets pulled into Solomon's memories and becomes a part of them, actually living out those memories in his mind. This extra mental stimulation has a profound healing effect on Aaron as he begins to make a miraculous recovery.

Discussion

Four Years Trapped In My Mind Palace is a unique novel that combines realistic fiction with historical fantasy novel by award-winning author Johan Twiss. 

Author Johan Twiss writes in his Author's Note at the back that the genesis of the novel was a news story about a man who contracted a rare form of meningitis when he was child. This illness resulted in full paralysis, and being trapped in his mind, fully aware, for fourteen years. No one recognized this but fortunately the man eventually achieved enough recovery to marry and have a life. This situation reminded the author of men he knew who were also trapped in their minds, but by dementia and Alzheimers. "Merging these two experiences together Aaron and Solomon's  story developed -- a coming-of-age story entwined with and end-of-age story written with a hint of nostalgia, a hint of whimsical unknown, and a heartwarming hope for the beauty of life."

In Four Years Trapped In My Mind Palace, the main story of the novel is the relationship between a teenage boy, Aaron Greenburg who is in a "vegetative" state, (a loathsome term that is used quite frequently and should be replaced by something more accurate like non-responsive state) and an elderly man Solomon Flesher, who is suffering from dementia. Inexplicably, the two, who are roommates in a senior's home, can communicate via their thoughts. This allows Aaron to experience some of the defining events Solomon lived through during a sixty year span from the 1920's to the 1980's.

Initially Aaron has created his own world which he calls his mind palace, a palace with many rooms. Aaron describes it as  " a giant castle surrounded by green rolling fields, bordered by a dense, dark forest..."   Aaron and the fruit from a painting in his room that he brings into the mind palace have grand adventures. However, while "...  most of the castle stayed the same, with a throne room, banquet hall, kitchen, and armory, other parts were also changing, like the north clock tower. No matter what we tried, we could never find a passageway that led to the tallest tower of the palace." For some reason, Aaron is unable to reach the north clock tower which seems to suggest that him reaching the north clock tower offers an escape from his locked-in syndrome.

When Solomon arrives, he is able to hear Aaron's conversations in his mind and is soon pulling Aaron  into his own memories when he has a dementia attack. Before Aaron arrives in those memories though, he first enters his own mind palace, but often in a new room. At first these rooms seem to be related to something Aaron cannot have in his own life. For example, the room he enters before being in Solomon's first memory of the Jack Dempsey fight, is a large dining hall with a table laden with fine china, silverware, crystal glasses and food. Aaron stuffs himself with the delicious food before passing through a door that leads to Solomon's memory.  Aaron is unable to eat in a normal manner and must be fed through a stomach tube and can only dream about eating real food. Before being drawn into Solomon's memory a second time, Aaron finds himself in an auditorium-like room, on a stage with his trombone which he misses playing. 

Before each of Solomon's memories, Aaron encounters a new room in his mind palace, moving from the weapons training area before the World War II foxhole memory, to the castle dungeon before the World War II concentration camp memory, to the south tower of the castle - the second tallest behind the massive north clock tower before meeting Walt Disney. This journey through his mind palace mirrors the gradual healing that is occurring in Aaron's mind. For example, Aaron shed's tears at his father's pain over his impending divorce, just before entering the weapons training area, then he blushes and is able to groan before entering the castle dungeon. As Aaron's recovery continues, as he begins to learn to speak again, he enters the south tower of the castle, behind the north clock tower.  Finally, as he begins to become more physically responsive, Aaron is able to enter the north clock tower where he sees his future and is thanked by a dying Solomon for his friendship. The north clock tower represents Aaron finally being freed from his mind palace. 

It is only when Nurse Penny sees Aaron visibly blushing in response to Solomon's granddaughter Sarah that she decides to get the doctors involved in re-evaluating Aaron. Up to this point she has refused to believe Solomon's view that Aaron is awake. This leads his physician, Dr. MacPhearson to realize that Aaron is aware and healing and to begin working with him. Aaron's progress is slow but ongoing. By the end of the novel he is able to communicate verbally and is upright in a wheelchair.

Since the novel is set in the 1980's,  from 1985 when Aaron contracted meningitis, to 1989 when he begins to wake up, little was understood about patients who appeared to be non-responsive but were still alive. It was assumed these patients were completely unaware and had no or little brain function. Over the years, with better medical support, some patients have recovered and revealed that though they were unable to respond, they were completely aware of everything happening around them. In some cases, patients could hear and understand family and medical professionals discuss removing life support. Readers might be interested in the research being done at Western University in London, Ontario Canada by Dr. Adrian Owen. His Owen Lab (https://www.owenlab.uwo.ca/ ) has much information on his work to determine whether a patient in a "vegetative state" is actually conscious and aware. His work has surprised the medical community and given hope to many families with members who are comatose or locked-in.

At the end of the novel Aaron has a chance to reflect on the friendship he had with Solomon and the role of sickness and suffering in life. He decides that although he wishes he had never been sick, he would not give up the friendships he formed with Solomon and his granddaughter, Sarah,  and the experiences his illness gave him. Aaron is now sixteen years old and even though he's been

Four Years Trapped In My Mind Palace is a thoughtful, engaging novel with a unique and fresh storyline that should appeal to teens and adults alike. Twiss invites his readers to consider what makes life meaningful, especially in situations like those of Aaron or Solomon.

Book Details:

Four Years Trapped In My Mind Palace by Johan Twiss
Fresno, California: Milk + Cookies     2023
320 pp.

Brother's Keeper by Julie Lee

It is June 1950 and Sora Pak and her younger brother Youngsoo are at the river: he is fishing and she is there to watch him and do the laundry. After fishing, Youngsoo races off to attend the Sonyondan Club meeting at the school led by his teacher, Comrade Cho. But twelve-year-old Sora no longer attends school, instead minding her two-year-old brother, Jisoo. Sora's mother is determined that she learn how to cook so they can marry her off in a few years but she wants to continue her schooling. 

Then as she's doing laundry, Sora sees an elderly woman rush to the river. Suddenly all the women at the river begin leaving for home and Sora races home as well. At home Youngsoo announces to their parents, Sangman and Yuri, that school has been cancelled because North Korea is now at war with South Korea. 

Korea was divided into two countries after World War II and the defeat of Japan, with North Korea a Communist dictatorship and South Korea a democracy. If North Korea wins, all of Korea will be Communist. Before the Communists, Japan occupied Korea. Sora's family, like other Koreans, were forced to adopt Japanese names and their Hangul language was banned. Youngsoo is thrilled that there is no more school, but Sora is worried.

Later that evening  Mr. and Mrs. Kim, their son Myung-gi and daughter Yoomee visit for dinner. Sora finds fourteen-year-old Myung-gi attractive. Like her, Myung-gi loves books and always carries around a bag of books. But today he shows Sora that his bag is filled with books about communism telling her he is "tired of reading the same mind-numbing rubbish. Marxist dialectics. Revolutionary principles. Everything for the collective."

During a dinner of rice, bean-sprout soup, kimchi and pancakes, the Kims tell the Paks they are planning to escape North Korea and travel to the South. Sora realizes if they escaped to the South they would have their freedom and not live in fear of their neighbours and maybe Sora could return school? Mr. Kim tells them they plan to settle in Busan on Korea's southern coast. Sora's father seems open to this idea and offers his wife's brother's house in Busan. But her mother is furious and tells the Kims they cannot possibly go with them, that it's too dangerous, and she admonishes Mr. Kim for telling them of their plans as it endangers her family.

Sora is devastated at her parents' refusal but she overhears her father give Mr. Kim directions to Uncle Hong-Chul's home. She knows that her mother's refusal is due to the fear over what happened to her own family: the execution of her mother's uncles, aunts and cousins because a relative was accused of being a traitor by the Communist regime. Sora's family was spared because it was not their family and her mother told the North Korean police her relative had broken into their house.

After this Sora's (mother) Omahni refuses to permit them from seeing or talking about the Kim's. When North Korea announces it has captured Seoul, Omahni insists that if they simply keep their heads down and follow the rules they will be fine. But Sora's father, Abahji isn't so convinced as he points out that under Communist rule they will not have free elections, there will be no contact with the outside world or freedom of speech. Abahji believes the Kim's will soon leave and that they will make it to Busan where it is safe.

Days later the Kim family is gone and rumours abound as to their fate. Because there is the belief that the Kim's are in a labour camp or worse, Omahni tells them that they are being shunned by association and she keeps Sora and her brothers inside.

By August 1950, Sora's village is emptying. Omahni insists that people are being taken by the police. When North Korea imposes a draft, Sora's family did a large pit at the edge of the millet field to hide Abahji in it for days at a time.

In September 1950, they learn  that General MacArthur, head of the American forces and their allies have recaptured Seoul and Inchon. Then in October, with the Americans continuing to push north, Sora's village is bombed. Eventually Pyongyang is taken and soon American troops arrive in their village. 

Then in November, China joins the war on the side of North Korea and the tide turns against the Americans. Abahhi is insistent that they leave that night, ahead of the American retreat. He tells an angry Omahni that once the Americans are gone they will be trapped in North Korea forever. When Sora sides with her father, Omahni gives in and they pack and leave for the South. Although the Pak family will gain their freedom, it will come at a price they could not have imagined. For Sora and Youngsoo it will be a journey that will forever change them.

Discussion

Brother's Keeper is Julie Lee's debut novel. Set in a Korea, divided by war, Lee chronicles the experiences of the Pak family's struggle to survive under the Communist dictatorship in North Korea,  their difficult decision to finally flee their home, and the journey of the oldest two children when they become separated from their family. Although Brother's Keeper is historical fiction, it is based on real-life events that occurred during the Korean war. City bombings, refugees crossing frozen rivers in canoes and on ice floes only to perish and taking refuge in abandoned homes were just some of the situations refugees from the North, like Sora and Youngsoo encountered, in their rush to freedom. It is also based on the experiences of her mother, who was fifteen-years-old and living in North Korea when the war began, and who also made the harrowing journey south as a refugee.

Set against the backdrop of the Korean war, Lee also explores the themes of filial duty to tradition and the place of women in Korean society through the character of  twelve-year-old Sora Pak. The Korean people have spent decades under Japanese occupation , during which the Japanese attempted to eradicate Korean culture. Their native language was suppressed and Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names. There is also an indirect reference to the possible use of comfort women when Sora states that "Japanese soldiers even kidnapped several girls from the high school." 

When the Japanese were defeated, Koreans were allowed to resume their Korean names and language. As the country came under the control of the Communists, Koreans would be eager to continue their cultural traditions despite the restrictions imposed on them. One of these was for girls to marry young, often at the age of sixteen. It was not uncommon for young girls to be pulled from school at a certain age to be trained in domestic duties like cooking and caring for children, in preparation for marriage. Sons were more valued than daughters and to have a son was considered a great blessing.

In Brother's Keeper, as the title suggests, Sora, who loves school and is a good student, has been pulled to care for her younger brother Jisoo who is two years old. It is her duty to do so. Sara feels "a twinge of loss....For all the learning I was missing. Math. Geography. Science...." Whenever she can, Sora hides behind the willow tree near the school window to listen in on the class. Helping her in this regard is her friend, Myung-gi Kim who leaves books for her beneath the willow tree. But Sora still dreams, even imagining herself one day graduating from high school. 

Instead of school, Sora finds herself forced to do child care and cooking and her lack of interest means Sora has difficulty mastering this task, which makes Omahni critical and abusive towards her. She wonders when Sora will learn to cook and how she will ever marry her off.  Omahni even comments on the colour of Sora's skin, "How is it that my daughter got the tan skin while my sons inherited my fair complexion?" 

Omahni is even critical of Sora in front of the entire Kim family, telling them, "No, our daughter is terrible in the kitchen, ... She's a clumsy girl who hates housework. I'm sure we'll never be able to get her married off when she's older."  Sora feels betrayed even though it is the custom for "humble parents always criticized their own children in front of others. It was the polite thing to do..."

When the Kim's reveal their plan to escape from North Korea, Sora is hopeful because she knows that there is more freedom in South Korea. Even though she realizes her being pulled from school has nothing to do with communism, she wonders, "What if one kind of freedom led to another?" Sora siding with her father who desires to accompany the Kim family, invokes Omahni's wrath. "Do you think South Korea is some magical place to cure all your ills? she hissed, her eyes wild with fear. 'It's mad of the same dirt and rock as here. Nothing will change for you. You'll still be a daughter. You'll still be a noona. You must still follow our traditions. You can't get out of those responsibilities, if that's what you're thinking."

However, things become so bad that the Pak family finally decide to leave North Korea. On the way, Sora and Youngsoo become separated from their parents and Jinsoo. It is now up to Sora, a twelve-year-old girl to not only find their way to Busan but also care for her younger brother who becomes seriously ill. As they endure starvation, cold, and even attempts by Koreans to kidnap them, Sora and Youngsoo struggle through the horrors of war.

When they arrive at their uncle's home in Busan, the reunion in bittersweet. Omahni is overwhelmed at seeing her precious son but doesn't give much thought to Sora. It's obvious that Youngsoo is ill so Omahni, thinking only of her eldest son's welfare, asks Sora to attend the third grade class nearby. She doesn't care for Sora's education but wants her to attend so that she can help Youngsoo catch up. Sora is struck by just how much more valued Youngsoo as a son is, compared to herself, a daughter. She watches her mother making rice porridge for him, a dish that requires constant care. "Had she ever made rice porridge for me? A quick radish soup, maybe, when I was nine and had drenched my nightclothes in fever.But never the loving, labored devotion of rice porridge." When the conversation turns to consulting the matchmaker in a few years, it is more than Sora can bear. She flees after seeing her mother chop the head off a fish. This is a metaphor for how Sora sees her future. The loss of school and the expectation of forced marriage make Sora like the fish - her life is over.

As the reality of Youngsoo's illness becomes apparent, Sora is overcome with guilt as she questions whether his illness and death was due to her lack of care for him. She also believes that if she had sided with Omahni rather than Abahji, they would never have made the journey and Youngsoo would be alive. Sora experiences intense survivor's guilt believing "It should have been me instead of Youngsoo...Her precious son."  Later on, Sora overhears Auntie talking to a woman in the market about the loss of Youngsoo and that at least they still have one son. The woman then sympathizes, "Can you imagine if she'd lost her only son and was left with nothing." implying that Sora has no worth because she's a daughter. Sora wonders what she has risked everything for as it seems Omahni won't relent. "I'd risked everything -- including my brother's life -- to get here, thinking one kind of freedom would automatically lead to another, that I could go to school, that I could write, that we would be happy. But I was wrong."   At this point Sora realizes she is going to have to fight for what she wants.

In a scene that is absolutely heartrending, Sora finally confronts Omahni during a cooking lesson, over Youngsoo's death and her desire to return to school. After telling her that she did her best to care for Youngsoo, Sora also states that she is forcing her to be someone that she is not and that she just wants to do something different. But Sora's mother sees this as a negative reflection on her own worth, that Sora is ashamed of her because she is uneducated. Because Sora is always doing the opposite of what she asks, Omahni inadvertently reveals that this is why Sora is her least favourite, a revelation that deeply hurts Sora as it seems to confirm what she believes. Sora tells her mother she is worth something. 

From their heated exchange it is evident that Omahni is acting out of fear for her daughter and her own insecurities. Her experience of being judged and found wanting by her mother-in-law and therefore  unworthy, leads her to want to save Sora from this fate. So she overcompensates by attempting to teach Sora to be a perfect cook, something Sora has no interest in. Omahni sees her actions as preparing Sora to survive in a world that is harsh towards women. Sora tells her mother she will survive because she's taught her to be strong and work hard.

Brother's Keeper is a well written novel that explores the Korean War from the point of view of children, portraying the devastating effects of war on families, women and children. Lee has provided her readers with a realistic portrayal of the war and the plight of Korean refugees as they struggled to escape the brutal Communist regime. All of the novel's characters are believable and unique. Sora, as the protagonist, is compelling as she fights for what she truly wants in her own life, going against the conventions of this era.

Seventy years later Korea remains divided, with families now separated over several generations. Life in North Korea under the communist dictatorship is harsh with no contact with the outside world and few freedoms. Considering what little is known about life in North Korea, it is understandable why so many wanted to flee, leaving homes and family behind.

To help her young readers orient themselves, Lee has provided a map of the Korean peninsula showing Sora and Youngsoo's journey to freedom. Also included are a Glossary of Korean Words and a Timeline of the Korean War. The informative Author's Note, with black and white photographs of the author's mother, helps provide the necessary historical background for the novel. 

Brother's Keeper is historical fiction at its very best.

Book Details:

Brother's Keeper by Julie Lee
New York: Holiday House    2020
314 pp.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day

The Mona Lisa Vanishes tells the story of the most remarkable art heist in the early twentieth century.

The story begins first, long ago in Florence in 1503 with the portrait of a young wife and mother, Lisa Gherardini by Leonardo da Vinci, who named the painting Mona Lisa. 

Five hundred years later, in Paris, France on Monday August 21, 1911 a man who has hidden all night in the Louvre. He had come to the vast museum on Sunday like any other visitor but when the museum was closing he didn't leave. Instead, he hid himself in closet among the easels and paint boxes. 

He knew it was possible to hide in the Louvre because a few months earlier, a French journalist who believed the Louvre's security was lacking hid himself overnight in the sarcophagus of an Egyptian king. He published his experience.

The storage closet the thief had hidden in overnight was near the Salon Carre where the most valuable artwork like Titian, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci was displayed.  The man emerged from the closet wearing a white smock like that of the Louvre maintenance workers. The paintings in the Louvre were not locked down as it was assumed no one would dare steal them. However, they were hung in a specific way that required some knowledge as to how to remove them. The thief had this knowledge and quickly removed the painting from the Salon Carre and slipped into the stairwell. There he removed the Mona Lisa from its antique frame and glass covering. Unlike most paintings, the Mona Lisa was painted on three slabs of wood joined together and it was heavy. To hide it, the thief placed the Mona Lisa under his white smock. After struggling to get out of the stairwell's locked door, he escaped into the Paris morning, taking the Mona Lisa and the doorknob.

At first no one realized the Mona Lisa had been stolen. It was considered inconceivable that anyone would attempt this. The workmen who had walked through the Salon Carre only an hour earlier that Monday morning, now saw a blank space on the wall. But they believed the Mona Lisa couldn't be stolen so they did nothing. Even on Tuesday morning when Brigadier Maximilien Alphonse Paupardin, the guard in charge of the Salon Carre, noticed the Mona Lisa missing, he assumed not that it had been stolen, but that the Louvre photographers had it. At this time, the Louvre was photographing its collection and the photographers often removed and returned paintings without telling anyone.

Louis Beroud, a painter who enjoyed painting the copyists as they worked in the Louvre, would be the man who discovered the Mona Lisa was missing. Beroud arrived at the Louvre with the intention of painting a girl working at the Mona Lisa. He was told by Brigadier Paupardin that the painting was being photographed. However, when the painting didn't show up, Beroud became impatient and asked Paupardin to find out when the Mona Lisa would return to the Salon Carre. But when Paupardin spoke to the photographers in the Louvre studio, they were puzzled and did not know what he was talking about.

With Theophile Homolle, the director of the Louvre in Mexico, a panicked Paupardin informed the curator of Egyptian antiquities, Georges Benedite. However, Benedite believed the Mona Lisa was simply somewhere in the Louvre. A search did not find the painting and Georges Benedite was forced to call in the Paris police. Soon all of Paris knew the Mona Lisa was  gone. What was the heist of the century would capture the attention of Parisians, French citizens and the world for months and remain unsolved for two years.

Discussion

The Mona Lisa Vanishes is "...a story about how a strange, small portrait became the most famous painting in history...about a shocking theft and a bizarre recovery." But as Nicholas Day aptly demonstrates, "...it is also the story of another way of looking at the world --clearly, plainly, without assumptions or expectations."  - the way the painting's creator, Leonardo da Vinci did. This is in contrast to the way the French police viewed their world, and therefore how they investigated the theft of the Mona Lisa.

After introducing the theft of the Mona Lisa, Day takes his readers back into the past, to the story of how the Mona Lisa came to be painted. It is a story that begins with Leonardo da Vinci, born at the height of the Renaissance in 1452, in Vinci. Leonardo is sent to apprentice with Andrea del Verrocchio, a Florentine painter and sculptor whom he soon surpasses in ability. His angel in the painting, The Baptism of Christ was so sublime that Verrocchio quit painting. Leonardo develops a new technique called sfumato in which the artist blends objects and people rather than outlining them in paintings. Unfortunately, Leonardo is often unable to finish works he is commissioned. He eventually would receive the commission to paint Lisa Gherardini, the wife of  Francesco Del Giocondo, a successful silk merchant and trader. His problem is that Leonardo is not just a painter but an observer of the world.

From entries in his notebooks, it is evident that he is obsessed with the world around him. His mind is on fire with questions and the quest to find answers through observation and study. This information is not necessary for his art, but this mindset means it is almost impossible to finish the commissions he receives, including the Mona Lisa. However, "...it means he sees the world without being blinded by what he thinks it is already going to be. He doesn't have assumptions about what something is or what it means. He doesn't leap to conclusions. His highest values are observations and experience..." As Day aptly demonstrates, this is in marked contrast to the way the Paris police proceed in their attempt to recover the Mona Lisa.

Interwoven with the story of Leonardo, his life and his painting, is the story of the Paris police's inability to solve the theft and recover  the Mona Lisa. Solving crimes is new to police work in the early twentieth century. Louis Lepine, head of the Paris police had begun standardizing police procedures. Helping him was Alphonse Bertillon, a pioneer in the new field of forensics. Bertillon, a temperamental man had developed a method of identifying someone using body measurements - known as anthropometry. His system, used throughout the world, was difficult to implement consistently. A newer technique of fingerprinting to identify a person was just coming into practice. Bertillon had two important leads in the Mona Lisa heist: a fingerprint lifted from the glass pane of the painting, and the knowledge that the thief likely worked in the Louvre.

However, unlike Leonardo da Vinci, Lepine and Bertillon did not have an open mind, instead working on assumptions. "It was the opposite of observation, the opposite of how Leonardo would have wanted the Mona Lisa theft investigated. Unlike Leonardo, Bertillon and Lepine didn't start with the world. They started with what they assumed the world to be." Lepine assumed that because the crime was not a bloody, violent one, it meant that the heist was the work of a "superior class of thief." Lepine was looking for either a professional gang or a consummate professional thief like Adam Worth. One theory held that a rich American had paid a professional thief to steal the Mona Lisa. In 1911, many Americans who had made their wealth during the Guilded Age were eager to showcase that new wealth and to do so they purchased the art of famous painters from Europe.  It was because they worked from assumptions and theories like this, rather than observations, that Lepine and Bertillon were unable to solve the heist.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes is not just a story about the theft of the Mona Lisa, but a biography of the the great Renaissance master, Leonardo da Vinci. Day also explores the world of the high Renaissance, while contrasting it with society and the art world in the early twentieth century. Readers will also learn how the Mona Lisa heist changed the public's perception of art and artists .Day's account is informative and definitely engaging, as he weaves his narrative back and forth between Leonardo's life leading to the painting of the Mona Lisa and the desperate attempts to solve the heist in the twentieth century. 

There are black and white oil on paper illustrations that will appeal to younger readers. However, inclusion of photographs, for example the Mona Lisa and the Louvre, of Pablo Picasso, Alphonse Bertillon and Vincenzo Peruggia would have added significantly to Day's telling. Other times, an image of a painting being discussed would have been very helpful. For example, Day writes about Pablo Picasso's painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and how this painting changed art, beginning a new movement in modern art. Without an image to consider, readers are left to imagine what Day is explaining. A map of Italy and France, showing the location of Florence and the Louvre 

Day does include an extensive list of sources at the back, confirming what readers will most definitely already know, that The Mona Lisa Vanishes is a well-researched book about a heist that is largely forgotten outside the art world. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

Book Details:

The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day
New York: Random House Studio      2023
278 pp.