![]() ![]() Loosely based on the stories of real sea otters rehabilitated at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, this novel will give readers lots to talk about, but uneven pacing and a rushed ending may leave some unsatisfied. The natural appeal of sea otters will draw readers in, but the book doesn’t shy away from real-world threats such as predators, disease, and pollution. The free verse effortlessly weaves in scientific information, giving Odder a voice without overly anthropomorphizing any of the animals. Now Kairi is fostering a new pup, and soon one is introduced to an initially reluctant Odder in hopes that she will help raise it so it can return to the wild. Soon Kairi is there too, stricken with “the shaking sickness” and having lost her newborn pup. Last time, the humans helped her reintegrate into the wild, but because of her injuries this time the outcome might be different. Injured herself during the rescue, Odder ends up recuperating at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, or Highwater as the otters call it, where she once lived as a young orphaned pup. Odder’s mom told her to stay away from sharks, humans, and anything else she didn’t understand, but after saving her friend Kairi from a shark attack, she encounters all three. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.Ī deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards-not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events-but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction ( Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction-a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.įive years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. ![]() Both Emmie and Kate appear to be white, but school scenes reveal multiethnic classmates.Ĭlassic middle school themes come alive, but they fail to really go anywhere However, the repetition of Emmie’s description as quiet, shy, and disenfranchised becomes as grating as a nasal whine. Though readers may be puzzled by the device initially, Libenson’s rationale for the dual portrayals becomes clear in the end. An artist using her doodles to illustrate the seventh-grade world, Emmie sees herself as someone with no voice, while the enigmatic, charismatic Kate is full of confidence and determined to push Emmie out of her comfort zone. Libenson uses two different illustration styles to distinguish between Emmie, the soft-spoken wallflower, and Kate, the outgoing girl of fabulousness. Emmie is a painfully shy girl who is forced to see and be seen one fateful day when a playful game with best friend Brianna turns into a nightmare. With doodle-illustrated prose chapters depicting Emmie’s world and entire comics-style sections depicting the popular Kate, Libenson takes readers inside the halls of middle school with the same nod to weirdness and eye-rolling angst as such format standards as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries. ![]() However, even end-of-the-world–level heartache can have surprising and comic consequences.Įmmie’s story is part of the growing subgenre that hybridizes the middle-grade and graphic novel. One bad day in seventh grade can feel like a lifetime. ![]()
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