U ILLI N I S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science Books make great gifts, but pick- ing the perfect books for your favorite youngsters can be daunt- ing. Let the expert staff of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books help you navigate the book- store wilderness full of shiny new children's books. Updated and expanded from last year's edi- tion, the Guide Book to Gift Books contains annotations for over 225 of the best books for giving (and receiving) and is available as a downloadable PDF file that you can print out and use for every holiday, birthday, or other gift-giving occasion on your calendar this year. Listed books have all been recommended in full Bulletin reviews from the last three years and are verified as currently in print. Entries are divided into age groups and include au- thor, title, publisher, and the current list price. To purchase, go to: www.lis.uiuc.edu/giftbooks/ THE BUvL LE T IN OF THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS January 2004 Vol. 57 No. 5 A LOOK INSIDE 177 THE BIG PICTURE Luba: The Angel ofBergen-Belsen by Luba Tryszynska-Frederick; as told to Michelle R. McCann; illus. by Ann Marshall 178 NEW BOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE Reviewed titles include: 184 *Prep byJake Coburn 191 * September 11, 2001: Attack on New York City by Wilborn Hampton 199 * The Beast by Walter Dean Myers 200 * Thunder Rose by Jerdine Nolen; illus. by Kadir Nelson 206 * Rainbow High by Alex Sanchez 214 BLUE RIBBONS 2003 216 SUBJECT AND USE INDEX EXPLANATION OF CODE SYMBOLS USED WITH REVIEWS * Asterisks denote books of special distinction. R Recommended. Ad Additional book of acceptable quality for collections needing more material in the area. M Marginal book that is so slight in content or has so many weaknesses in style or format that it should be given careful consideration before purchase. NR Not recommended. SpC Subject matter or treatment will tend to limit the book to specialized collections. SpR A book that will have appeal for the unusual reader only. Recommended for the special few who will read it. The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (ISSN 0008-9036) is published monthly except August by the Publications Office of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and distributed by the University of Illinois Press, 1325 S. Oak, Champaign, IL 61820-6903. REVIEWING STAFF Deborah Stevenson, Editor (DS) Janice M. Del Negro, Contributing Editor (JMD) Betsy Hearne, Consulting Editor and Faculty Liaison (BH) Elizabeth Bush, Reviewer (EB) Karen Coats, Reviewer (KC) Krista Hutley, Reviewer (KH) Hope Morrison, Reviewer (HM) Reviewers' initials are appended to reviews. OFFICE STAFF Molly Dolan Krista Hutley Hope Morrison SUBSCRIPTION RATES 1 year, institutions, $70.00; individuals, $50.00; students, $15.00. In countries other than the United States, add $7.00 per subscription for postage. Japanese subscription agent: Kinokuniya Company Ltd. Single copy rate: $5.50. Volumes available in microfilm from ProQuest, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Complete volumes available in microfiche from Johnson Associates, P.O. Box 1017, Greenwich, CT 06830. Subscription checks should be made payable to the University of Illinois Press. All notices of change of address should provide both the old and new address. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, University of Illinois Press, 1325 S.Oak, Champaign, IL 61820-6903. All inquiries about subscriptions and advertising should go to University of Illinois Press, 1325 S. Oak, Champaign, IL 61820-6903, 217-333-0950; toll free 866-244-0626. Review copies and all correspondence about reviews should be sent to Deborah Stevenson, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820-6601. Email: [email protected]; phone: 217-244-0324. Visit our homepage at http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/puboff/bccb Periodicals postage paid at Champaign, Illinois © 2004 by The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Drawings by Debra Bolgla. This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Cover illustration by Ann Marshall from Luba: The Angel of Bergen-Belsen ©2003. Used by permission of Tricycle Press. JANUARY 2004 * 177 THE BIG PICTURE Luba: The Angel of Bergen-Belsen by Luba Tryszynska-Frederick; as told to Michelle R. McCann; illus. by Ann Marshall This complex picture book is based on the true story of Luba Tryszynska-Frederick, a Polish Jew who saved more than fifty children in Bergen-Belsen when she found them abandoned in the woods by truck drivers ordered to shoot them. Through- out the winter of 1944-45, Luba begged, bribed, and cajoled various other camp prisoners and officials to give her food for the children, all but two of whom sur- vived. Celebrated as a hero after the war, Luba found that her own two-year-old son, torn away from her at Auschwitz, and her husband and family were all dead. Michelle R. McCann has documented her account of Luba's experiences with great care, including an opening author's note indicating fictionalized dialogue and a list of the children involved, a prologue supplying background on Nazi con- centration camps, an epilogue on the aftermath of Luba's rescue, and a note on World War II and the Holocaust. Also provided are a map and bibliography of books, articles, videos, letters, personal interviews, and web sites. The narrative is thoughtfully rendered to reveal incidents in a straightforward tone that neither flinches from nor overdramatizes a stark historical episode ("They used one wet cloth to keep fifty-four children as clean as they could"). A photograph at the book's end shows sturdy Luba with some of the children on liberation day, and another depicts their fifty-year reunion in Amsterdam. As the youngest child res- cued by Luba has said, "My mother always told me that she gave birth to me, but that Luba gave me life." Ann Marshall's thickly textured paintings, sometimes overlaid with eerie fabric or paper collage effects, can be read on two different levels. In the scene where the children create a birthday party for Luba, for instance, the bright cloth- ing and happy faces project a veneer of fantasy over the horror. One could ask, is this a glamorized image, repeated as it is on the cover, to resemble kibbutzniks dancing the Hora? A picture of Luba collecting wood in snowy darkness resonates like some "Silent Night" Christmas card, with a spotlight shining over the wooden barracks and barbed wire fences. Even in the most desolate moment, when an illustration shows Luba despairing of the children's lives, a pink-frilled bedspread and velvet blanket drape gracefully over the side of her bunk. Yet the scraped and battered boards in this same picture, the thin legs of a child lying askew on a filthy mattress, and a face locked in a deathly stare on the facing page all project realistic depth. With hints of Dutch Renaissance portraiture, the artist seems to be daring us to ask if horror can be beautifully portrayed. Especially unnerving are the am- biguous faces that engage a reader directly from the past. 178 * THE BULLETIN The challenge for any Holocaust book intended to be read aloud to a picture-book audience or alone by young readers is how to depict a brutal and often hopeless situation for children whom we want to nurture with hope for the future. How does one stay true both to the inherently tragic nature of the Holo- caust and the expectantly triumphant nature of childhood? The June 1997 Big Picture featured another picture book depicting a Holocaust survivor, Neil Waldman's The Never-Ending Greenness, which joined the company of Hoestlandt's Star of Fear, Star of Hope (6/95), Nerlove's Flowers on the Wall (3/96), Nivola's Elisabeth (3/97), and Oppenheim's The Lily Cupboard(3/92); all of these manage, largely through tight focus, to reconcile those two impulses sufficiently to make for a successful narrative. More recently, Kushner and Sendak's Brundibar(BCCB 12/03) grappled with the same question, with its rosy overtones and bleak visual subtext. Darker than Brundibar,Luba will nevertheless depend on adult transla- tion to challenge children to distinguish between the book's dreamlike snatches at celebrating survival and its bleak expressions of death haunting the background, but it will then provide young audiences with a compelling account-and an in- spiration for riveting discussion. (Imprint information appears on p. 210.) Betsy Hearne, ConsultingEditor NEW BOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE AGELL, CHARLOTTE Welcome Home or Someplace Like It; written and illus. by Charlotte Agell. Holt, 2003 231p ISBN 0-8050-7083-4 $16.95 R Gr. 5-9 Aggie's romance-writing mother has always been something of a mystery to Aggie and her brother, Thorne. Mom constantly moves them from place to place, but is she really researching her books, as she says, or is she simply looking for someplace to call home? Aggie is certainly tired of being transplanted, so when they land in Ludwig, Maine, she is delighted to learn that maybe, finally, this might be a place where she could stay. Her mother leaves her and Thorne in the care of their elderly grandfather, who, besides making a mean lemonade, receives prescient phone calls on his foot.