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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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| 33607003089334 | Young Adult | SPINELLI | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
A stunning novel of the Holocaust from Newbery Medalist , Jerry Spinelli. And don't miss the author's highly anticipated new novel, Dead Wednesday !
He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Filthy son of Abraham.
He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself, and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels.
He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi, with tall, shiny jackboots of his own-until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind.
And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.
Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable-Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II-and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young Holocaust orphan.
Author Notes
Jerry Spinelli was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania on February 1, 1941. He received a bachelor's degree from Gettysburg College and a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University. He worked as an editor with Chilton from 1966 to 1989. He launched his career in children's literature with Space Station 7th Grade in 1982. He has written over 30 books including The Bathwater Gang, Picklemania, Stargirl, Milkweed, and Mama Seeton's Whistle. In 1991, he won the Newbery Award for Maniac Magee. In 1998, Wringer was named a Newbery Honor book.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 Up-In Warsaw in 1939, a boy wanders the streets and survives by stealing what food he can. He knows nothing of his background: Is he a Jew? A Gypsy? Was he ever called something other than Stopthief? Befriended by a band of orphaned Jewish boys, he begins to share their sleeping quarters. He understands very little of what is happening. When the Nazi "Jackboots" march into the town, he greets them happily, admires their shiny boots and tanks, and hopes he can join their ranks someday. He eventually adopts a name, Misha, and a family, that of his friend Janina Milgrom, a girl he meets while stealing food in her comfortable neighborhood. When the Milgroms are forced to move into the newly created ghetto, Misha cheerfully accompanies them. There, he is one of the few small enough to slip through holes in the wall to smuggle in food. By the time trains come to take the ghetto's residents away, Misha realizes what many adults do not-that the passengers won't be going to the resettlement villages at the journey's end. Reading this unusual, fresh view of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of a child who struggles to understand the world around him is like viewing a poignant collage of Misha's impressions. He shares certain qualities with Spinelli's Maniac Magee, especially his intense loyalty to those he cares about and his hopeful, resilient spirit. This historical novel can be appreciated both by readers with previous knowledge of the Holocaust and by those who share Misha's innocence and will discover the horrors of this period in history along with him.-Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
For this WWII tale set in Warsaw, Spinelli (Wringer) invents a narrator akin to Roberto Benigni's character in Life Is Beautiful. The narrator intermittently indicates that he has some distance from the events, but his perspective affords him no insight, so readers may be as confounded as he. As the novel opens, Uri, a larger boy, chases down the narrator and pries away the loaf of bread he has pinched: " `I'm Uri... What's your name?'... `Stopthief.' " After Uri realizes that the boy truly does not know his own name, Uri gives him one-Misha Pilsudski-as well as a past (befitting the boy's "Gypsy" appearance). Simple-minded Misha admires the Nazis, whom the boys call "Jackboots" ("They were magnificent. There were men attached to them, but it was as if the boots were wearing the men.... A thousand of them swinging up as one, falling like the footstep of a single, thousand-footed giant"). Misha comes off as a clown, and for children unfamiliar with the occupation and its horrors, the juxtaposition of events and Misha's detached relating of them may be baffling (Nazis force Jews to wash the street with their beards, and hang one of Misha's friends from a street lamp). At times, he seems self-aware ("I had no sense. If I had had sense, I would know what all the other children knew: the best defense... was invisibility"), yet these moments are aberrations; he never learns from his experience, and a postlude does little to bring either his perspective or the era into focus. Ages 10-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Both a deceptively simple commentary about the Holocaust and a survival adventure as seen through the eyes of an orphaned eight-year-old. Forced to steal food to survive, the boy, a Jew or a Gypsy, answers to various monikers, such as "Stopthief!" and "Poppynoodle," as he does not know his real name. Before long, he is marched to a Jewish ghetto, where he witnesses atrocities and processes his observations in poetic ways. As his fate, and that of the other ghetto inhabitants, plays out in the novel, the growing sense of evil is all encompassing but leavened by the hope raised by this unwanted child's innocence. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 MEMORY I am running. That's the first thing I remember. Running. I carry something, my arm curled around it, hugging it to my chest. Bread, of course. Someone is chasing me. "Stop! Thief!" I run. People. Shoulders. Shoes. "Stop! Thief!" Sometimes it is a dream. Sometimes it is a memory in the middle of the day as I stir iced tea or wait for soup to heat. I never see who is chasing and calling me. I never stop long enough to eat the bread. When I awaken from dream or memory, my legs are tingling. 2 SUMMER He was dragging me, running. He was much bigger. My feet skimmed over the ground. Sirens were screaming. His hair was red. We flew through streets and alleyways. There we thumping noises, like distant thunder. The people we bounced off didn't seem to notice us. The sirens were screaming like babies. At last we plunged into a dark hole. "You're lucky," he said. "Soon it won't be ladies chasing you. It will be Jackboots." "Jackboots?" I said. "You'll see." I wondered who the Jackboots were. Were unfooted boots running along the streets? "Okay," he said, "hand it over." "Hand what over?" I said. He reached into my shirt and pulled out the loaf of bread. He broke it in half. He shoved one half at me and began to eat the other. "You're lucky I didn't kill you," he said. "That lady you took this from, I was just getting ready to snatch it for myself." "I'm lucky," I said. He burped. "You're quick. You took it before I even knew what happened. That lady was rich. Did you see the way she was dressed? She'll just buy ten more." I ate my bread. More thumping sounds in the distance. "What is that?" I asked him. "Jackboot artillery," he said. "What's artillery?" "Big guns. Boom boom. They're shelling the city." He stared at me. "Who are you?" I didn't understand the question. "I'm Uri," he said. "What's your name. I gave him my name. "Stopthief." 3 He took me to meet the others. We were in a stable. The horses were there. Usually they would be out on the streets, but they were home now because the Jackboots were boom-booming the city and it was too dangerous for horses. We sat in a stall near the legs of a sad-faced gray. The horse pooped. Two of the kids got up and went to the next stall, another horse. A moment later came the sound of water splashing on straw. The two came back. One of them said, "I'll take the poop." "Where did you find him?" said a boy smoking a cigarette. "Down by the river," said Uri. "He snatched a loaf from a rich lady coming out of the Bread Box." Another boy said, "Why didn't you snatch it from him?" This one was smoking a cigar as long as his face. Uri looked at me. "I don't know." "He's a runt," someone said. "Look at him." "Stand up," said someone else. I looked at Uri. Uri flicked his finger. I stood. "Go there," someone said. I felt a foot on my back, pushing me toward the horse. "See," said the cigar smoker, "he doesn't even come halfway up to the horse's dumper." A voice behind me squawked, "The horse could dump a new hat on him!" Everyone, even Uri, howled with laughter. Explosions went off beyond the walls. The boys who were not smoking were eating. In the corner of the stable was a pile as tall as m Excerpted from Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.