Names in a Jar

October 1, 2021

Gr 9 Up-Sisters Anna and Lina love spending time in their father's Warsaw bookshop reading books about science and poetry. That is, until the Nazis seize control of Poland and life as they've known it ceases to exist. Anna and Lina tell their family story through alternating perspectives, starting in 1939 and continuing on through the end of World War II and beyond. After the Nazis take control of Poland, Anna, Lina, and their father are relocated to the Warsaw Ghetto. Anna is smuggled out and goes to live with a Christian family where she employs her love of reading and science to become a useful member of her new community. Lina is not as lucky. Remaining in the ghetto to care for her father and work with the Resistance, Lina is transported to the Treblinka death camp in Poland. The fast-paced storytelling sometimes leaves out details that would have rounded out the narrative more. VERDICT A secondary purchase. This would be a good filler for libraries that can't keep World War II historical fiction on the shelf. It's a great pick for reluctant readers and those who enjoy historical fiction and World War II stories.-Maryjean Riou, Hunterdon County Lib., Flemington, NJ

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August 1, 2021
Sisterhood and survival in Poland during the Holocaust. Polish Jews Anna and Lina find themselves swept into the Warsaw ghetto in 1940 when the Germans invade. In alternating first-person narration, readers get a glimpse into less-familiar Holocaust experiences as 12-year-old Anna first smuggles food into the ghetto and then is herself smuggled to safety with kindly Christian farmers, while Lina, her older sister, becomes a forger and later endures Treblinka. Lina's story horrifies in expected ways, with starvation, death, and a sadistic Nazi supervisor, but Anna also encounters depravity and bodily harm as well as romance and develops a love for medicine and science. Despite hardships, neither sister gives up; indeed, staying alive for Anna keeps Lina going. The opening, narrated by Anna's adult self, lessens the suspense; readers know going into the novel that her survival is a given. Secondary characters show heroism in ways large and small; moments when Anna and Lina express sympathy for individual Nazis, thus humanizing those characters, may not be credible to readers. Both Anna and Lina become romantically involved with Christian men. Minor but pervasive inaccuracies will likely be ignored by many readers eager for a novel in this genre, and there are powerful moments here despite those issues. All characters are light-skinned. Hebrew and Yiddish terms are defined in the text. The Holocaust always makes for a moving read; this will succeed on that alone. (historical note) (Historical fiction. 14-18)

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