Blue Thread

March 1, 2012

Gr 8-10-Sixteen-year-old Miriam lives in 1912 Portland, OR, in a strict Jewish American home. Her father is a successful business owner and her mother is the perfect wife. Miriam has everything she needs, but she knows there's more to life than what her parents have planned for her. She wants to be a printer like her father, but they want her to marry an acceptable Jewish man. While her mother plans their trip to New York City to find her a husband, Miriam gets caught up in the fight for women's suffrage. At first she's nervous about going against her parents' wishes, but curiosity gets the better of her and she begins helping the suffragist Osborne sisters make yellow ribbons in support of women's voting rights. However, after a mysterious girl named Serakh whisks Miriam back to biblical times, her desire to be a larger part of the movement becomes stronger. Through her adventures with Serakh, she learns about her past, her present, and the powerful influence she has over both. Teens may find the story slow at first, but will want to know how it turns out.-Wendy Scalfaro, G. Ray Bodley High School, Fulton, NY

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2012
Travels in time give a middle-class girl the courage to fight for both women's suffrage and her own dreams. Sixteen-year-old Miriam, lover of typography, wants nothing more than to train at her father's print shop. But respectable, well-to-do girls don't work with heavy machinery in 1912 Portland, Ore. Miriam's immigrant Jewish parents, proud of the future they've built from poverty, intend an advantageous marriage for their only living child. If befriending a lovely pair of poor young suffragists isn't enough to make Miriam rebel, what is? Perhaps time travel is what she needs. Miriam is visited by her biblical relative, Serakh, who begs Miriam to travel back in time to help her ancestors. The daughters of Zelophehad seek a favor from Moses, and Miriam is needed to provide them with courage. Miriam pops back and forth between worlds: well-to-do Portland, where she makes morning calls and attends fancy-dress parties; biblical Moab; and the equally exotic, alien environment of suffragist marches and working-class neighborhoods. It takes all three to help her find the initiative, empathy and common sense to help push her toward adulthood. In the spirit of Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic (1988), with a mix of historical details about the women's-suffrage movement and early printing, tied together with a very Jewish thread of historical continuity. (Historical fantasy. 11-13)

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