When a baby sister comes along, it seems she is just too little for anything! Will she ever be big enough to play? To whisper secrets? To eat kimchee? Will she always lie there? Scream for no reason? Be so helpless and little? When a baby sister is just too little to do anything, what’s her big sister to do but wait and wait and WAIT . . . and dream about what’s to come.
Jeetas family is caught up in the whirlwind of arranging marriages for her two older sisters, but the drama and excitement leave Jeeta cold. She knows that tradition demands the parade of suitors, the marriage negotiations, the elaborate displays, the expensive wedding parties but where is the love and romance that the movies promise? She dreads her turn on the matrimonial circuit, especially since Mummy is always complaining about how difficult it will be to find Jeeta a good husband, with her dark skin and sharp tongue.As Jeeta spends more time with her new friend from school, Sarina, and Sarina’s educated, liberal parents, she begins to question her tradition-bound parents’ expectations. And when she falls in love with Sarina’s cousin, Neel, Jeeta realizes that she must strike a balance between independence and duty and follow her own path.
A heartbreaking story of loss and love.As autumn turns toward winter in 1938 Berlin, life for Marianne Kohn, a young Jewish girl, begins to crumble. First there was the burning of the neighbourhood shops. Then her father, a mild-mannered bookseller, must leave the family and go into hiding. No longer allowed to go to school or even sit in a café, Marianne’s only comfort is her beloved mother. Things are bad, but could they get even worse? Based on true events, this fictional account of hatred and racism speaks volumes about both history and human nature.
The year is 1940 and France has fallen to the German army. In the village of Mont-Saint-Martin, brothers Pierre, René, and Fat Marcel enjoy an idyllic childhood-stealing berry tarts, playing soldiers, and holding contests to determine who of the three is the biggest and best liar. As the small community, especially its Jewish members, begins to feel the effects of the war, René and Marcel form a warm but secret friendship with one of the German soldiers occupying their village. The boys know no good can come of this friendship, but they don’t realize the extent to which they have put the lives of their family and friends in jeopardy . . . until they discover that they are not the only experts at lying. This poignant and thoughtful story is told in the form of letters to a group of schoolchildren by the now-adult Marcel. First published in Ireland.
Although the Iron Curtain is gone, the memory of the high drama, tragedy, and comedy that was life in the Soviet Union remains. It meant endless lineups in the cold — lineups enlivened by poetry and paranoia. It meant family life lived in two small rooms, but a family life that was rich in love and laughter. It meant trying to escape all-seeing eyes, especially those of the old ladies in their babushkas who guarded every courtyard.
Tina Grimberg brings color and perception to a life we think of as gray, impersonal, and foreboding. She was born in Kiev and grew up feisty, bright, and funny in a tiny flat with her parents and her older sister. Her descriptions of life in that grand and beleaguered city are by turn hysterical and heartbreaking. When Tina turned fifteen, the government, desperate for foreign wheat, traded “undesireables” for food, and that meant that many Jewish families like Tina’s could leave. Until they could leave on the hair-raising journey that would eventually bring them to Indiana, she was publicly shamed and cut off, but she never lost her affectionate and clear-eyed view of her homeland. This brilliant collection of memories is an unforgettable look behind what was the Iron Curtain; at a way of life that was reality for millions of people in the twentieth century.
The people Reason Cansino loves most are all in danger. Reason’s mother, Sarafina, has disappeared from the mental hospital in Sydney with Reason’s evil grandfather, Jason Blake. Jay-Tee, the closest thing Reason has to a best friend, has used all of her magic and faces death at any moment. Only Reason can find the answers within her family’s magic to save everyone who matters most to her.
A girl’s escape from Nazi Germany.The city Eva Bentheim once adored is no longer familiar. A swastika is emblazoned on the flag atop the City Hall. Teachers, family, and friends are beginning to disappear. Her father seems gone in a different way; he has become ill, fragile, and despondent as the Nazis gain power. When things get worse, Eva’s mother desperately tries to obtain the proper papers for her family to leave the country. Then a horrible night of roundups occurs and Eva’s father is taken away. A nocturnal search begins for someone who can help release him from the city jail. Eva’s boyfriend, Arno, may have a way to save her father from deportation, but it soon becomes clear that their struggles have just begun. Exquisitely felt and written, Walk the Dark Streets resonates with the indomitability of the human spirit even as a loving family’s attempts to stay together grow more and more hopeless.
Baer’s previous novel, A Frost in the Night, relates earlier episodes in the lives of the family in Walk the Dark Streets.
Johanna’s grandfather founded the largest clothing store in town and built up his wealth with his own hands–at least that’s the family legend. But when Johanna travels to Israel for a class project, she finds out that the family of Meta Levin originally owned the store. She learns that her grandfather legally acquired the company during the Nazi regime according to the anti-Semitic laws of the Third Reich. Johanna is worried: her family’s wealth is obviously founded on injustice. Should she keep silent, or should she wake the sleeping dogs?
A collection of 25 children’s stories from around the world. Published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the international charity, Oxfam, the stories have been collected either in their countries of origin or from London schoolchildren. There are animal tales, ghost stories and family stories.
Twelve-year-old biracial James has grown up in a musical family. Not only are both of his parents musicians, but his four grandparents are as well. Everyone assumes that James will pursue music, yet he would rather become a newspaper reporter…or an astronomer…or a cook…anything that will let him leave music behind and be his own self. Everything changes when, on a family visit to London, James discovers a portal that leads to London in the year 1600, then finds himself unable to return to the point in time he had left behind. James is forced to join the Children of the Chapel Royal, a group that performs for the queen of England, and the musical talents he denied are now put to the test and pushed to their limits. In this alternate world James comes to realize that he cannot survive and get back to the twenty-first century without recognizing, understanding, and making the most of his musical gifts. Jane Louise Curry brings Elizabethan London to life in this remarkable story about music, family, and finding one’s place in the world.