Awards
A Booksense.com Winter Children’s Pick
A Sydney Taylor Book Award Honor Book
Selected for lists of the best children’s books of 2006 by
* the New York Public Library (“100 Titles for Reading and Sharing”)
* the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (“CCBC Choices 2007”)
* the Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education
* the “Forward”
A California Writers Club First Prize for children’s fiction manuscript
A Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award
Summary of Reviews
“An insightful exploration of the effects of traumatic experiences, and an ultimately hopeful portrait of a young girl . . . [A] masterful job of showing the complexity of relationships among religious and ethnic groups in [S. Africa and Poland] . . . The relationships between the protagonist, her adoptive parents, and their domestic worker are particularly well realized. However, the light that shines through this book is the carefully imagined and described process of painful but ultimately positive personal growth that Devorah experiences.” —School Library Journal
“[T]he story is gripping . . ..” —Hazel Rochman, Booklist
“Heartbreaking & poignant with a positive conclusion . . . A haunting work of historical fiction” —Kirkus Reviews
“Devorah’s narration alternates between flashbacks to life in the sisters’ Polish village of Domachevo and their later experiences as orphans, and both tales are equally touching and engrossing; her observations of the way black South Africans are accorded underclass status within their own country leads to provocative comparisons with her own sudden class reversal as a member of a relatively privileged white community.” —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“With bittersweet overtones, it reminds the reader of human savagery yet also shows the caring strength of one man and the power of sisterly ties.” —selected and reviewed by Lesley Agnew, leading independent bookseller, for “Teenage Previews for March-June,” The Bookseller, U.K.
“A simply written, but extremely powerful, novel . . . Wulf displays great skill in her poignant handling of one of the darkest periods of 20th century history. [The sisters] are drawn with remarkable sympathy and understanding . . . [A] very impressive achievement . . . conveying to young readers some notion of the depths of evil to which humanity can sink, but at the same time demonstrating to them the strengths of resilience, tolerance & love.”—Robert Dunbar, The Irish Times
