Searching for Lottie

December 15, 2018
A modern American girl researches the post-World War II fate of her great-aunt, who is both her namesake and a fellow violinist. For a seventh-grade family research project, Charlotte "Charlie" Roth chooses to explore whatever she can find out about "the other Charlotte": Charlotte Kulka, who reportedly perished in the Holocaust. Enlisting the aid of her mother's mother, Nana Rose, the original Charlotte's younger sister, Charlie uses photographs, letters, journals, scrapbooks, library resources, and a dogged determination to uncover the journey and fate of her lost relative. Ross uses a close third-person narration to follow Charlie's discoveries about her family's separations, losses, and adaptive strategies as well as her own emerging relationship with music. While the modern-day characters are more simply drawn than the historical ones, this is a Holocaust story that conveys some of the trauma of the time period without overwhelming graphic detail. Readers will appreciate putting together the puzzle pieces, which are loosely based on the author's own family's story.A highly accessible and endearing historical mystery about a painful period of the past that still resonates in the contemporary landscape. (author's note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)

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February 1, 2019

Gr 5-7-Twelve-year-old Charlie (short for Charlotte) Roth has been assigned a family history project. She decides to research her long-lost namesake, Lottie Kulka, presumed to have perished in Hungary during the Holocaust. Lottie's mother and younger sister, fortunately, escaped Austria to the United States, but Lottie was not so lucky. She was studying violin in Hungary and was never heard from again. Charlie interviews her own grandmother, Lottie's sister, and she shares scrapbooks, letters, and other mementos related to Lottie's life in Europe. These family documents lead Charlie on a slightly unbelievable path in which she finds distant relatives and discovers new truths about her family. In so doing, she navigates the world of middle school orchestra, boys, friends, and her immediate family. The dialogue, though information-packed, is often stiff. The author concludes with a note explaining how this story weaves together her own family's history. She further explains how the abundance of online and digital genealogical resources makes researching one's family history more possible than ever before. She encourages readers to research their own heritage and ask family members to share stories. VERDICT A satisfactory Holocaust story with encouraging words for readers to spark storytelling and genealogical research.-Lisa Crandall, formerly at the Capital Area District Library, Holt, MI

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2019
Grades 4-6 For her social studies report on a family member, 12-year-old Charlie researches her grandmother's sister, Lottie, who disappeared during the Holocaust. Though Mom tries to dissuade her from taking on what's sure to be a sad subject and possibly a distressing one, Charlie persists and, with help from her grandmother's memories and treasured mementos, learns that she and Lottie share more than their given name, Charlotte. Charlie's research leads to a deeper understanding of her family's history, a discovery that comforts her grandmother, and connections with previously unknown relatives. An appended author's note reveals how Ross' family history inspired the novel. Charlie stands out as the most multifaceted of the novel's characters. The third-person narrative balances her increasing drive to discover Lottie's fate with details of her everyday life as a rising seventh-grader who botches her audition for orchestra, finds her older brother annoying, and begins to take an interest in boys. But it's the discovery of her family's past that grounds Charlie's story and drives it toward a satisfying conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)