A Last Note from Your Narrator . . . I am Haunted by Humans

As a rule, I don't do the Holocaust.

For me, the horror of what people do to each other just gets worse with age.  I remember lying on the floor of my Jr. High library, continuously drawn to a Time Life book on WWII.  In it was a double-paged picture of a Jewish woman whose breast had been cut off.  I must have looked in that book 50 times.  I couldn't believe it was real.  I was hypnotized by the mind-numbing atrocity of it all.

Over time, I have sheltered myself from war movies, TV shows, and any book set during WWII.  Last year when the high school classes were finished with their Holocaust studies, I asked the head librarian if he would mind shelving the books.  I was afraid one of them might open and sear me with yet another miserable image.  In the first Middle School where I worked, I stealthily wept while investigating our collection.

So you can see why I was in no hurry to read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, especially when someone told me that I had to read this book but that the ending would make me cry.

The book kept popping into my existence, however.  When you have a book to shelve in the "Z's", you tend to notice it, as there aren't too many of them.  On the cover is a finger ready to push over a row of dominos and The New York Times quote that it is "BRILLIANT and hugely ambitious . . . It's the kind of book that can be LIFE CHANGING".  So a few months ago, I found a copy at a used book sale at a local library.  Fine, I decided.  I'll get it.

I put off reading it for a bit.  What horror awaited me in its pages?  It took me a few months to read it all the way through.  I refused to read it at night and let myself get sidetracked by all sorts of other titles in the meantime.  But by page 25 I knew I had something special in my hands. 

I am a sucker for good figurative language.  This book overflows with the most beautiful prose and imagery.  It's enough to make you want to eat it up with a spoon. 

Her wrinkles were like slander.  Her voice was akin to a beating with a stick. 

The book is told, in third person, from the perspective of the Grim Reaper, who's awfully busy in this book. 

Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

The book thief is Liesel, a German orphan, who steals her first book on the day her little brother is buried.  She is illiterate.  A book drops unnoticed from a gravedigger apprentice's pocket.  Liesel picks it up.  She is on her way to a foster home in Molching.  She never sees her mother again.  She sees her dead brother nightly in her dreams. 

A Photo of Himmel Street

The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that look nervous.

There is a murky snow spread out like carpet.

There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air.

 Hans and Rosa Hubermann take Liesel in.  Later, they also take in a Jewish fugitive, Max, who lives in their basement for months and months.  Rosa is an insultingly loud woman who makes horrible soup.  Hans is tall, quiet, pretty much invisible painter and accordion player who becomes the center of Liesel's world.

Max spend a lot of time writing, down there in the Hubermann's basement, while Liesel is out playing soccer, getting into trouble with her best friend Rudy, and stealing books from Nazi bonfires and the mayor's wife's library.  Max writes, among other things, a story called "The Word Shaker".  I have never read a more touching fairy-tale-esque take on the Holocaust as this little story that Max writes for Liesel.  In it, the Fuhrer decides to rule the world with words.  His words create forests of farmed thoughts.  Word Shakers climb these trees of terrible words and throw them down to the people below.  One Word Shaker has a single teardrop made of friendship that has dried into a seed.  She plants it among the other trees.  This tree grows faster than all the other trees.  The Fuhrer demands that it is chopped down.  The Tree Shaker climbs up in protest and stays for many months.  No axes are strong enough to bring the tree down.  Eventually the Tree Shaker is coaxed down by a friend, the man whose tear grew the tree in the first place.  The mighty tree falls and carves a "different-colored path" through the forest of hateful words. 

This was the best book I have read in years.  Tomorrow I will take it to work and slap a barcode on it and start feeding it to the students who are ready to read it.  Maybe if it comes your way, you'll read it too.  It's worth it.  And you might cry a bit at the end, in the middle, and even in the beginning.  It's worth it.  Every word of it.  Thanks for listening. 

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

When I was 10 years old, I was having a really hard time with asthma and it was decided that I would live in a group home for asthmatics for a few months.  I saw it as a grand adventure and did indeed have a pretty interesting time there.  I learned some independence and life skills that shaped who I am today.  The first night, however, as I got ready to climb into my little bed in the dorm, I felt very strange.  I was in an unfamiliar bed, in a huge room with lots of other girls, getting ready to go to a new school and I didn't know a soul.  I put my hands under my pillow and found my mom had left me a surprise.  A book.  The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  She had written me a sweet message inside and I still have the book.  It filled me with a sense of being hugged by my mom who was about an hour away at that point. 

The book itself was wonderful.  I have reread it many, many times.  Kit Tyler grew up on a plantation in Barbados but when her wealthy grandfather dies, she is sent to live with her Aunt and Uncle in Puritan Massachusetts.  What a culture shock for this free spirit who loved to swim.  When she jumps into the harbor to rescue a doll, she raises the suspicion of the locals.  Only witches swim.  Her colorful clothing is deemed inappropriate.  Bright colors are for devil worshippers.  She befriends Hannah, the local outcast.  Hannah is a Quaker who does not attend the local meetings.  She lives alone, except for a black cat.  When troubles befall the town, sickness and crop failure, all eyes and fingers point to the suspected witches.  It is a beautiful, heartbreaking book.  I am happy to say the ending is a good one. 

When I am working in my middle school library, I like to read the books around me, so I can keep my finger on the pulse and better recommend books to my students.  I also must confess that the easy reading and surprising plots make the books a pleasure.  The Bronze Bow caught my eye a few weeks ago.  Normally it isn't one I'd pick up, but when I saw it was by Elizabeth George Speare, the author who had penned The Witch of Blackbird Pond, my interest level rose.  The book was just as easy to fall into as the first one.  Winner of the 1962 Newbery Award, The Bronze Bow is the story of Daniel, a Jewish boy living in Nazareth during the time when the Romans had taken over the town.  His parents were killed by the Romans and Daniel flees to the hills to live with the rebels who are preparing to overthrow their enemies.  He leaves behind his elderly grandmother and his sister, who has been so traumatized by the event that she never leaves the house.  After a few years as a fugitive in the hills, Daniel's adventures bring him back into the town.  Jesus has made his appearance and all are wondering if this is the man who will lead the uprising against the Romans.  Not overly pushy about religion, the book describes the hope and change of attitude Jesus causes in the local people.  The book was great.  I broke one of my own rules and brought the book home to finish it.  I generally keep my reading separate, but I couldn't let the weekend go without knowing what was to transpire.

After the story was a biography on Speare, who lived from 1908-1994.  She didn't begin writing until her children were grown and wrote only four books, all geared toward the upper-elementary audience. All four books were honored with awards.  I can see why.  The plots and especially the characters grip you like few historical novels can.  I searched my library shelves and found The Sign of the Beaver which she had written in 1983.  Set in the untamed Maine wilderness, 12-year-old Matt has been left to look over their recently built homestead while his father goes to bring the rest of the family to join them.  Matt survives a bee attack and is loosely looked after by the local Indian chief and his grandson.  In exchange for teaching the grandson how to read the "White Man marks", the grandson Attain starts showing Matt better ways to survive.  I love books about the settlers and once again had to bring the book home to finish it, not wanting to wait until today to find out the ending.  Would Matt's family eventually return or would he leave the homestead to winter with the Indians?  Great books, all of them, and I will recommend them to my students and son.  Thanks for listening.