Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Uri Shulevitz’s Chance: Escape from the Holocaust (Memories of a Refugee Childhood) appeared on my radar after I read a couple of Shulevitz’s picture books with my kids; I went to put another one on hold, saw that title listed as a new release, and thought Absolutely! Holocaust narratives have fascinated me for decades, and this one promised a score of illustrations to boot, given that Shulevitz is a Caldecott medalist. I’ve had it around ever since my library finally received it, and when it kept missing its chance for the top spot in my TBR queue, I decided to risk trying it as a read-aloud with my 13-year-old. It was a stretch, I knew–not only does she prefer contemporary realistic fiction, she does NOT prefer books about war–but there were some graphic novel-style panels included in Shulevitz’s illustrations, and so I decided it was worth a try.

I kind of knew it was a doomed effort.

To be fair, we did get through more than one reading session, but ultimately she admitted she wanted to bail, as it ‘wasn’t really her thing.’ By that time, however, we’d gotten through the first hundred pages or so (because illustrations), which meant that I had a solid start , which meant it was much easier to go ahead and let it top the queue so I could just finish it on my own. And while it was a bit of a logistic challenge–it’s not picture book sized, but it’s bigger than your average hardcover nonetheless, and HEAVY, and my sometimes-carpal-tunnelly wrists didn’t love me reading it in bed–it was totally worth it. It may be big, but with the illustrations (and the impressively large font size, which my eyes loved), it’s not nearly as lengthy as it looks, and Uri’s memories come with observations that are usually fascinating and sometimes hilarious. His family fled Poland for the USSR fairly early in the war, which is likely why they survived. They lived in Turkestan longer than any other place there, managed to journey back to Poland after the war ended, and wound up in Paris for another longer stretch. They endured significant hardships, but of a completely different variety than the Polish Jews who ended up in concentration camps; in fact, the only WWII narrative I’ve read that bears any significant resemblance to this one is Esther Hautzig’s The Endless Steppe.

Bottom line? I recommend both books. Because it’s my blog, and I can.

In other news, I took my kiddos (plus one) to our PTA-sponsored skate night on Friday night, and then the rest of the weekend was sort of all about trying to manage our transition to the time change. (Partly because lack of sleep does bad things for my already-struggling teenager’s mental health, and I wanted to mitigate that as much as possible.) Oddly enough, while losing power late Friday night until around 1:40 Saturday morning was annoying, it made it easy to declare that we were just living our whole Saturday as if the time change had already happened. (Because I hate setting clocks, so why do it twice in twelve hours?) My deepest sympathies to all families with (and teachers of) small children this week, though. Because the struggle is real.