Kirkus Reviews Special:
SPOTLIGHT ON FICTION 2006
35 HOT DEBUTS
AN AUTHOR DELIVERS A FIRST NOVEL ONLY ONCE of course, and with that book launches a career. Maybe that’s the reason, along with the consistent craving for things new, that so many readers have such optimistic curiosity about fiction debuts: Here’s a voice you haven’t ever heard, telling […]
Reviews in Full
Raisins and almonds; Sleep, my little one, sleep
Reviewer: E. R. Bird “Ramseelbird” (Manhattan, NY)
If I were a writer of children’s books, which I am not, and I wanted to write my debut novel I’d start very slow. Maybe write something fluffy and fun to begin with and then slowly, over the years, ease my way […]
Haunted by the loss of her parents to war and typhus, and driven from her Polish shtetl during the murderous anti-Semitic pogroms of 1921, Devorah, 12, and her younger sister, Nechama, are taken with 200 other Jewish orphans to safety in South Africa’s Jewish community. The first-person narrative in this debut novel swings back and […]
WULF, Linda Press. The Night of the Burning: Devorah’s Story. 208p. glossary. CIP. Farrar. 2006. Tr $16. ISBN 0-374-36419-2. LC 2005052113. Gr 5-8
This first-person narrative is an insightful exploration of the effects of traumatic experiences, and an ultimately
hopeful portrait of a young girl. In 1920 Devorah, 11, and her younger sister are the sole Jewish […]
Devorah and her younger sister, Nechama, have lost their uncle to war, their parents to hunger, overwork, and disease, and their remaining aunt to a Cossack sword in a bloody pogrom. Nonetheless, they are luckier than most Jewish orphans during the brutal post World War I years in Poland, because they have been selected to […]
KIRKUS REVIEWS
Aug 15, 2006
Losing their parents to influenza and typhoid fever, Devorah and Nehama endure another frightening and brutally senseless experience in their young lives when their simple early 20th-century Russian shtetl is attacked in an anti-Semitic pogrom. The orphans witness the gruesome stabbing death of their guardian, while everything burns to the ground. In […]
