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Product Description
Quill & Quire
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, known for her previous YA novels about the Armenian genocide and the 1930s Ukranian famine, takes on the Nazis’ notorious obsession with racial purity in her new novel for middle-grade readers.
It is 1950, and 12-year-old Nadia Kravchuk arrives in Brantford, Ontario, with two kind people whom she knows are not her parents. Since the beginning of the Second World War she has lived with three different families, including one in a Displaced Persons camp, though her memory of the past has been blurred by trauma.
Nadia spends most of her time yearning to remember the past while simultaneously fearing what is lurking in her subconscious. Everyday things – a ginger snap, a yellow paint chip, a woman in a brown suit – trigger memories that Nadia must piece together to determine if she is the daughter of a Nazi general, a kidnappee, or both.
While flashbacks obviously have a place in a novel about a forgotten past, Skrypuch relies too heavily on the device. Nadia experiences almost two dozen flashbacks in this short novel, including a meeting with Hitler, a trip to a labour camp, and the time she read a children’s book filled with Nazi images and propaganda.
These memories are so much more engrossing and vivid than her present difficulties adjusting to life in Canada. The rather banal events of Nadia’s present function only as filler between flashbacks and as a failed attempt to generate suspense between bursts of memory.
This aside, Skrypuch succeeds in making some of the more horrific and lesser-known events of the Second World War accessible and engaging for younger readers. While those well-versed in history will likely predict the novel’s ending early on, most readers will be shocked to learn about the Nazi’s Lebensborn program, in which blonde, blue-eyed young people were kidnapped and brainwashed in order to propagate the Aryan race.
The historical vivacity of Stolen Child, coupled with endnotes on the facts behind the story, ultimately trumps a lack of action in the plot’s present.
Book Description
This story of a Lebensborn girl--a child kidnapped for her "Aryan looks" by the Nazis in their frenzy to build a master race--reveals one child's fierce determination to uncover her past against incredible odds.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A trail of memories,
By Valerie Sherrard (Miramichi, New Brunswick Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Stolen Child (Mass Market Paperback)
This story is sure to captivate youngsters as they read about Nadia, whose past is a mystery that slowly reveals itself to her once she feels safe enough to explore it. As a newcomer to Canada, Nadia has questions about where she came from and why - memories that ought to be pleasant, but instead seem horrible and frightening.Through a sequence of flashbacks that are triggered by everyday occurrences, Skrypuch fills in the blanks of Nadia's past, and ends the story on a hopeful note. Highly recommended!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
suspensful and enlightening,
By
This review is from: Stolen Child (Mass Market Paperback)
I LOVED this book. And it made my heart ache so much for all the injustices the Nazis committed, especially toward children. The story is told from the point of view of 12 year-old Nadia who arrives in Ontario, Canada in 1950 after the end of WWII from the Displaced Persons' camp, where she has spent the last five years.As she adjusts to a new country, new language and new parents who have risked their lives to save her, Nadia suffers nightmares and flashbacks of the things she has endured. She is confused about who she is. As her story unfolds, the pieces of the puzzle of her identity and how she ended up in the Displaced Persons' camp are put together, and we get the full picture of what actually happened to her and her family. Author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch has written a story that brings to life the lesser-known history of the Lebensborn Program. Hitler and the Nazis planned on expanding the "master race" of the Aryans whose destiny they believed was to rule the world. So they began stealing blond, blue-eyed Polish and Ukrainian children from their parents, an estimated 250 000 children. Can a mother endure something so horrific? I have a blond, blue-eyed child... Although truthful about what occurred during WWII, the book is not filled with detailed violent scenes. However, I will wait before letting my daughter read it. It can be scary for children to realize that they can be stolen from their parents in the middle of the night in their own homes. Despite this, the story shows how courage and love can motivate people to help and risk their lives for one another during periods of extreme duress. It can also teach our children not to make fun of immigrant children because we have no idea what they may have suffered and escaped. I would highly recommend this book for in class reading and discussion as part of learning history in the school curriculum. Readers are certain to find this book enlightening, intriguing, suspenseful and hopeful. For me it was also heartbreaking as I imagined the pain of thousands of parents who have lost their children under a cruel regime.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Historical Fictiion Novel About Nazi Germany During World War II!,
By Jaden Winfree (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Stolen Child (Mass Market Paperback)
This historical fiction novel permits the reader to learn more about some of the terrible things that took place in Nazi Germany, during World War II (e.g. The imprisonment and torture and mass genocide of not only Jewish people -but anyone who was perceived not to be of the aryan race). It is well researched and Marsha Skrypuch paints a beautiful portrait this horrible time in history with with the written word. I would recommend this novel to young and old alike!
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