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Title: The Journey Back by Johanna Reiss ISBN: 0-06-447042-3 Publisher: HarperTrophy Pub. Date: 25 September, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.73 (11 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Jaclyn's Book Review--2nd hr
Comment: Annie de Leeuw, a young Jewish girl, has been hiding during WWII for almost 3 years with her older sister Sini at Johan Oosterveld's house with his wife Dentje, and Opoe, his mother. Now the war is over and Annie can finally be together with her family!
But things just aren't the same at her house, Rachel (Annie's eldest sister) has found a new religion, Sini is out all night dancing, her father is getting remarried, and her mother had died during the war. Annie starts finding herself missing the Oosterveld's...will things work out?
I thought this book was a little confusing at times. The plot--returing home--is a little dull also. Though I think the author has good description & her openings have a good start. She keeps you hoping that something good will happen to Annie, and is even a little suspensful.
People who might like reading this book would propbably be people who like reading about a persons feelings, or read the first book (which I had not),or just people who don't like reading action books.^_^
Rating: 4
Summary: "The Journey Back" By Johanna Reiss
Comment: After reading "The Journey Back" I am more aware of the hardships, dangers, and deprivations Jews and others went through after World War II. The story takes place in Holland, and its about what happens to the members of a Jewish family after the war ends, and they return home. The main character in the sotry is a thirteen-year-old girl named Annie de Leeuw. She and jer sister Sini might have been killed if it weren't for the Oostervelds, the courageous family who hid them for three years. The other main characters are Annie's father and her oldest sister Rachel. When Annie returns home she finds that her family no longer knows one another. Her mother is dead; her father is distracted. Her sister Sini tries to make up for lost time by going dancing every night, and Rachel has changed her religion to Christianity. Another important character in the book is Magda, Annie's stepmother. No matter how hard she tries, Annie cannot seem to please her. To Magda, Annie is the most imperfect girl in the entire universe. She criticizes Annie's clothes, hair, manners, and about everything else. For this reason I think Annie's conflict is man vs. himself since she has to built a new life for herself. I like the book in general, though the end was a dissappointment since it didn't give details about what would happen to Annie and her family. I wish the author would explain things better, and not just leave some conflicts unresolved, like in the case of the mean stepmother. My predicitions for the future of Annie's family are that the stepmother will always be mean, and Annie will have to get used to her new life. I give the book four stars. Like I already said the end needs some work. I still think it's a very informative book, and it helped me learn more about Worl War II.
Rating: 4
Summary: An interesting but bland sequel
Comment: It seems like many sequels to books about the Shoah are hit-and-miss; sometimes there will be a gripping account of a return to life, healing, love, and a semblance of normalcy, but more often than not it's just an ordinary undistinguished account relating what happened after the War. This book falls into the latter category.
Unlike many sequels of this nature, here the immediate family have more or less all stayed alive and are reunited soon after the War ends. Mr. de Leeuw and the three sisters (who appear to each be about ten years apart in age) have been in hiding, not camps or ghettos. They don't bear the same kind of intense and painful scars from that experience as someone who was in a ghetto or camp would. They were in relative safety, and Holland was no Poland or Hungary. Mrs. de Leeuw, while dead, died in the first book in a hospital because she had been very sick for a long time, not because she was murdered by the Nazis. The de Leeuws have lost friends, neighbours, and relatives, but the immediate family has not been split up, nor do they have to spend time in displacement, rehabiliation, or refugee centres, immigrate, trek across foreign lands on their way back to their native Holland, or wait around in agony waiting for word of the other members of their immediate family. They have much less to deal with than other people in post-Shoah sequels usually do. The most serious problems in here are having to get used to living together as a family again, Annie's overbearing new stepmother Magda and Magda's 18 year old daughter Nell, Sini's constant dancing with soldiers at night and her fights with her father over it, and Rachel's conversion to Christianity and the family strife that is causing. Maybe she did have a spiritual epiphany when the family who were hiding her took her to church with them for Xmas services, but it just seems tragic that someone who survived the Shoah, who had to spend those years in hiding instead of living a normal adult life all on account of her religion, would embrace a new religion instead of taking pride in her own religion once she's free to practise it again.
It's an interesting story, but really anticlimactic and overly domestic after all which went before. This recounting of what happened afterwards just isn't as gripping as the accounts of people who lost most of their families, didn't return to their native lands, or had it much worse than merely being in hiding in a relatively safe nation-state like Holland.
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Title: The Upstairs Room (Trophy Newbery) by Johanna Reiss ISBN: 006440370X Publisher: HarperTrophy Pub. Date: 30 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Daniel's Story by Carol Matas ISBN: 0590465880 Publisher: Scholastic Pub. Date: 01 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: The Final Journey by Gudrun Pausewang, Patricia Crampton ISBN: 014130104X Publisher: Puffin Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor ISBN: 014034893X Publisher: Puffin Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story by Lila Perl ISBN: 0380731886 Publisher: HarperTrophy Pub. Date: 09 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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