Book Review

In early 1939, 10-year-old Franziska Mangold is sent from Germany to England on a Kindertransport and an uncertain future. Though her grandparents converted out of Judaism several generations ago, Ziska's family is still considered Jewish by the Nazis, and she finds herself the victim of school bullies and discriminatory laws. She still considers herself a Christian when she arrives, but slowly begins learning more about Judaism thanks to her Orthodox foster family, the Shepards. In particular, her older foster brother Gary helps her to feel welcome.

When the war comes to England in 1940, Ziska, now renamed Frances, experiences things such as evacuation to the countryside, rationing, bombing raids, and loved ones at war. Along the way, she comes to terms with the very real possibility of never seeing her blood family again. She grows closer to her foster mother, Amanda, than she was with her own mother, Mamu. As the war draws to an end, Frances has mixed feelings over reuniting with any potential surviving members of her family. She's become more Jewish over the years, a far cry from her early years in Germany, and has also grown to feel like a British girl, no longer just a refugee.

Why did I read the book? I thought it was going to be an intense, tragic book, but instead it was fascinating, humorous in places, and uplifting, despite a generous sprinkling of fear and tragedy.

MY FAMILY FOR THE WAR won the American Library Association's Mildred L. Batchelder Medal for 2013. It is awarded to the most outstanding children's book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States.

MY FAMILY FOR THE WAR by Anne C. Voorhoeve was originally published in Germany in 2007 and was translated into English by Tammi Reichel in 2012.

The Stoxen Library copy is in the balcony at PZ7.V944 My 2012.

by Sister Faith Wanner