Is It Night or Day?

February 22, 2010
Chapman, who wrote about her family's Holocaust ordeal in the adult book Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust
, assumes the voice of her mother, Edith, who at age 12 is sent by her Jewish parents from increasingly anti-Semitic Germany to live in America with relatives. Edith's plaintive narration describes her father's mounting fear of the Nazis (“suddenly, we were filth, Jews polluting the village,”) and her mother's increasing detachment. The story of Edith's ocean voyage to America provides some light moments; without her parents around, Edith's fears and anxiety are always evident, but her interactions with other young Jewish emigrants are touchingly childlike, such as when they play hide-and-seek onboard. In Chicago, Edith is met by a disdainful aunt who treats her like a servant and classmates who keep their distance. Though her story reads more like a memoir than a novel, Chapman captures a plucky determination in Edith that readers will find endearing. There is no Cinderella ending for Edith, but the hope she finds in Jewish ballplayer Hank Greenberg and the honesty in her story make this historical fiction well worth reading. Ages 10–up.

May 1, 2010
Gr 5-9-Tiddy, 12, can't understand why she is being forced to leave her beloved family to go and live in a strange land. By 1938, anti-Semitism has taken hold in Germany and the Westerfields, "an old and once respected Jewish family of Stockstadt," are suddenly "filthy Jews." Grandmother refuses to leave, but Vati and Mutti fear for the lives of their daughters, so they send Betty to a family in Chicago. A year later Tiddy is put on a ship to America to live with her Onkel Jacob. She soon finds that her aunt and cousin do not want her there, and that her sister lives too far away to visit often. From her first day in her new home and school, Tiddy is stripped of her identity and connection to her homeland. She is horrified when Aunt Mildred throws away her beautiful handmade blouse. She faces the humiliation of being placed in first grade at the age of 12 because she can't speak English. The final cord is severed when her parents die in a concentration camp. The author has "given voice" to her mother, Edith Westerfield, in this fictionalized account of her immigration experience. In doing so, Chapman has created an engaging memoirlike novel."Wendy Scalfaro, G. Ray Bodley High School, Fulton, NY"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2010
Grades 6-10 *Starred Review* Chapman based this spare historical novel on her mothers experience of coming to America to escape Nazi persecution. At age 12, Edith is sent by her German Jewish parents to relatives on Chicagos South Side in 1937. Oppressed by her aunt, who makes Edith work as a maid, and teased at school, where she starts off in first grade until she learns English, Edith suffers prejudice, including anti-Semitism in the girls locker room (Dirty Jew!); and after the U.S. declares war, other children view her as an enemy alien and call her Dirty Kraut. Even worse, she receives almost no word from her parents, until the final shocking news about the camps comes in 1945. In Ediths bewildered, sad, angry voice, the words are eloquent and powerful. Did her parents want to get rid of her? Why does her older sister, also in Chicago, not call? Just as heartbreaking is an early letter from her mother: I open the door and no one is there. On a lighter note, baseball helps Edith, and her hero, Hank Greenberg, inspires her to take pride in her Jewish heritage. As with the best writing, the specifics about life as a young immigrant are universal, including the books title, which is drawn from a quote by a Sudanese immigrant Lost Boy who arrived in the U.S. in 2001.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)