Details Books Conducive To Someone Named Eva
Original Title: | Someone Named Eva |
ISBN: | 0618535799 (ISBN13: 9780618535798) |
Edition Language: | English |
Setting: | Slovakia Czechoslovakia Poland |
Literary Awards: | Society of Midland Authors Award Nominee for Children's Fiction (2008), Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Nominee (2010) |
Joan M. Wolf
Hardcover | Pages: 200 pages Rating: 4.11 | 8846 Users | 852 Reviews
Chronicle In Favor Of Books Someone Named Eva
Don't blink or you'll miss it. The arrival of a noteworthy work of historical fiction for kids tends to work one of two ways. Either the marketing machine behind the book hits bookstores and libraries full-force, cramming said book down everyone's throats until they yield and make it a bestseller/award winner... or nothing happens at all. The book slips onto shelves without so much as a squeak, never insisting that anyone go out of their way to find it. "Someone Named Eva" belongs firmly in the latter camp. It's small and subtle and extraordinarily good. The kind of WWII children's fiction other authors should look to emulate, given the chance.Eleven-year-old Milada remembers the night. The night when there was pounding on the door and Nazis in her Czechoslovakian home. The night when her grandmother pressed a garnet pin into her hand and told her to never forget who she was. But since that time Milada had a difficult time keeping that promise. Having been forcibly removed from her family and taken to a bizarre Nazi-run girl's school, Milada quickly learns the reason for her presence in the Lebensborn center; her shiny golden hair and bright blue eyes. Renamed Eva, Milada is part of a system intent upon turning her into a "good" German citizen. The kind of place where she can be taught the evils of the Jews, the glory of Hitler, and the joys of being adopted into a real German family's home. Based on events following the destruction of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, author Joan Wolf tells of the real Lebensborn center in Poland, the crimes it committed against an untold number of girls during WWII, and what it takes to stay true to your heritage.
Wolf is also very good at displaying the effectiveness of intense psychological brainwashing. When Milada says that, "it was hard to remember that I wasn't a Nazi, that I didn't want to be the Aryan ideal, that I hated Germany," you understand why she says this. The psychological damage inflicted on these girls must have been intense. Little wonder then that, as Wolf mentions in her Author's Note, "Very little has been written in English about the Lebensborn centers that housed kidnapped children, part of which may be due to the fact that so few children were found after the war." What's more, Wolf knows how to manipulate her reader so that we find ourselves in the same position as Milada. When she realizes with a shock that she can't remember her old name, I challenge you to remember it yourself. It's gone and as she wracks her memory, we wrack our own. Such a clever technique.
My mind makes me pair books together. That's just how it works. And at some point, mid-way through a read of "Someone Named Eva", I realized that this book should be paired alongside The Night of the Burning: Devorah's Story by Linda Press Wulf. Both take place during WWII, and they deal with very different adoption journeys. You could create an entire reading unit out of these two books alone. It's almost as if they were made for one another, so perfectly to they complement and contrast one another's themes. Before you do that, however, you must read this book first. It's Joan M. Wolf's first book for children, and I want it to get a proper amount of attention. Books like this one don't write themselves. For a good jolt of historical fiction to the brain, "Someone Named Eva" may well be one of the smartest books of the year.
Identify Based On Books Someone Named Eva
Title | : | Someone Named Eva |
Author | : | Joan M. Wolf |
Book Format | : | Hardcover |
Book Edition | : | First Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 200 pages |
Published | : | July 16th 2007 by Clarion Books (first published 2007) |
Categories | : | Historical. Historical Fiction. World War II. Holocaust. Young Adult. War. Fiction |
Rating Based On Books Someone Named Eva
Ratings: 4.11 From 8846 Users | 852 ReviewsNotice Based On Books Someone Named Eva
I am currently reading Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf. I am not that far into the book, so there isn't much to tell you about the story part of it, but I'll try my best. This book was a recommendation by Mrs. Foley, its genre is historical fiction, it is placed in the time when the Nazis ruled. Milda is Jewish, and the day after her birthday the Nazis come. They separate the men and women of the village and take the men away. The women are taken into a gymnasium, wondering where the men ofSo well written. I had never heard about this part of the war. It seems the more you look the more horrors there are. And while this book is fictional, the story of the kidnapping and the effective brainwashing that took place at the time is very real. Everything was so modern and streamlined, and yet, so barbaric and horribly backward. I suppose evil always is...
Monday at the library they had a new display of nominees for the Beehive Award (similar to Texas' Bluebonnets) so I picked up this book. This is an amazing work, not only because I carried it around with me all day yesterday eager to keep reading at each free moment, but also because it addressed a chapter of history I had not heard before (while fiction, it appears to have been well researched). I had no idea that Hitler's forces had basically kidnapped children from all their occupied areas
Found this randomly while shelf reading at the library the other day. It isnt the most amazingly written book, and it doesnt really go in depth in any part of the story, but it was still an interesting read about an aspect of WWII I feel like people dont write about much. And the ending nearly made me cry.
I currently finished Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf. This review is only about the theme of the story,which I like to describe by picking words to describe the theme. I think the the two words that best state the theme of the book are hope & bravery. The first is bravery because Milada was taken away from her family to go to a harsh German boarding school to learn German ways,the language, and life. As well as getting a new name,Eva. It was hard for her since she was Czech and hated the
I couldn't put this book down. It is a fictionalized account of a topic I had previously known nothing about--the kidnapping of Eastern European children (e.g., Polish, Czech, etc.) by Nazis to be placed first in Lebensborn centers and later to be adopted as "Aryan" children into German families.This is a book geared for the juvenile audience. While there is very little in the book that details the horrors of the Holocaust, I think the topic itself would probably be incredibly terrifying to
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