Canadian Books for Middle School Readers

by Dave Jenkinson

This column’s books all deal with history, the history of people, real and fictional, as well as the history of words.

Kathy Kacer and Sharon McKay, both well-known authors for middle school readers, have collaborated on a trilogy of collected biographies dealing with the experiences of Jewish children and adolescents living in Europe during World War II. Presently, only two books, Whispers from the Ghettos and Whispers from the Camps, are in print, but the third, Whispers in Hiding, will be published in 2010. The trilogy’s contents are derived from the authors’ interviews with the books’ subjects, with the first two volumes containing 12 and 13 “chapters” or “episodes” respectively. Each of the current books includes a map of Europe showing countries’ borders as they appeared at the time of the Second World War. Ghettos’ map locates the ghettos cited in the book while Camps’ map does the same for selected European concentration camps.  

Many young  (and some “older”) readers view a book’s “Introduction” as something to be skipped over, but readers need to read this section in both Ghettos and Camps. For those lacking knowledge of this period of history, the introductions provides the factual context necessary for understanding the books’ contents. For example, I thought myself relatively well-informed about the Holocaust, but, in reading Camps’ introduction, I found that I was one of those individuals who used the term “concentration camp” to describe all Nazi prison camps. According to Kacer and McKay, “there were several different types of camps. There were labour camps, transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and, of course, the death camps....In total, there were more than a hundred major concentration camps, and thousands of smaller ones.” 

Each of the the separate “chapters” is titled, and the place and year(s) in which its events occurred are identified. Where a photo of the child/adolescent is available, it is included. Because each piece is usually just an incident in the juvenile’s life, the authors have used a “Postscript” to explain what the long term wartime outcomes were for the child/adolescent and her/his family members. Additionally, the postscript updates readers on what the story’s subject has done since the war’s conclusion.

The stories in Whispers from the Ghettos are equally divided between female and male perspectives, with the narrators’ ages principally ranging between 11 and 17. What these survivors choose to share varies widely. For example, in “First Love,” Maud Beer, a 13-year-old inhabitant of the Czech Republic’s Terezin Ghetto in 1942, talks about her first romance and the stolen kisses she shared with Hermann in the ghetto’s confines before he elected to join his mother when she was “transported” to the east. George Berman, who spent the years from 1939-1944 in Poland’s Lodz Ghetto, was just 17 when his family was ordered to move into the ghetto. Forced to work at repairing motors for the German military, George, in “Sabotage,” makes the risky decision to seemingly fix motors while actually incapacitating them. One of the more unusual stories is “China Beckons” which spans the years from 1939-1945. The family of Hannelore Heinemann Headley managed to escape Europe’s concentration camps by emigrating to Shanghai, China. However, when Japan entered WWII, the Japanese, at Germany’s request, created a ghetto for China’s Jews. In “The Train,” the family of 13-year-old Joe Morgan, who had been in Poland’s Miedzyrzec Ghetto, is on a train in 1940 that is transporting Jews to a concentration camp. The parents decide that at least one of their four children should be given another chance at life. Only Joe is both small enough to fit through the cattle car’s small window and old enough to stand a chance of surviving on his own.

Only four of the stories in Whispers from the Camps are about females, and, in the main, the stories’ participants are older than those found in Ghettos. The 13 stories begin with 10-year-old Felicia Steigman Carmelly’s boarding a concentration camp bound train with her family in “The Funeral Parade,” and the collection concludes with:”The Oppressed Freed the Persecuted” in which the 76st Tank Battalion, an American unit composed of black soldiers, themselves an oppressed minority, liberate a concentration camp. Between can be found stories like that of Bob Kornhauser who, in “Last Stop Before Auschwitz,” escaped from the train taking him to that death camp. The harsh realities of camp “life” are revealed in stories such as “One Potato, Two Potato” where taking even a single potato from the camp kitchen could result in a death sentence. In both “The Angel of Death” and “The Four Selections,” the camp’s doctor did not heal the sick but decided which were to be sent to their deaths. As the war was obviously coming to an end, the Germans, rather than abandon the camps’ inhabitants, marched them to other camps further from the fighting (“March to Freedom” and “Fighting for Life”). One story, “Remembering the Holocaust,” is told via free verse while “The Liberation of Dachau” is presented in the form of a brief three scene play.

Whispers in Hiding, the forthcoming book, will focus on those children who escaped the concentration camps by going into hiding.

Kacer, Kathy & Sharon E. McKay. Whispers from the Ghettos. Puffin Canada/Penguin Canada, 2009. 162 pp. ISBN 978-0-14-331251-2.

Kacer, Kathy & Sharon E. McKay. Whispers from the Camps. Puffin Canada/Penguin Canada, 2009. 153 pp. ISBN 978-0-14-331252-9.

Deborah Ellis is another name that will be immediately recognized by middle school readers who, through their votes, have acknowledged a number of her books with provincial and state readers’ choice awards. A continuing theme in Ellis’s fiction and nonfiction is her concern about the oppression of children and how they too often become casualties in what are essentially adult conflicts. Those middle schoolers who have read Ellis’s Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak (Groundwood, 2004) or Off to War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children (Groundwood, 2008) will recognize the format of her Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees.wherein, as she did in the earlier pair of books, Ellis puts a personal face on those children and adolescents whose lives are being impacted by armed conflicts.

Ellis’s “Introduction” should be required reading for those middle schoolers who are unfamiliar with the history of Iraq, a nation that only became independent in 1932. Based upon interviews Ellis conducted in Jordan, Children of War gives voice to 23 Iraqi juvenile refugees, 12 girls and 11 boys, between the ages of 8 and 19, with most being in their teens. Ellis prefaces each of the children’s “chapters, which are as short as two pages and as long as nine pages, with an explanatory note about the family’s situation prior to the its members becoming refugees. With three exceptions, the interviews are accompanied by a black and white photo of the person who was interviewed.  

And what do the interviewees have to say? Obviously, each child’s/adolescent’s experience is unique, but certain themes emerge, with few being positive. While life under Saddam Hussein was not perfect, in most instances it was preferable to what the families experienced during the American bombing and in the chaos following Saddam’s being overthrown when Shia Muslims exacted revenge upon Sunni Muslims and when general lawlessness led to ransom-driven kidnappings and murders. The term, “economic sanctions,” a form of punishment that the West imposed upon Saddam’s Iraq, takes on a new, more personal, meaning when it’s expressed in terms of the people who died because necessary medical supports were not available. Even after a number of years, most of the book’s subjects are still living in refugee camps or are living illegally among Jordanians who often physically or economically abuse them, knowing that the Iraqis risk deportation should they seek legal recourse. Most of the book’s families have lost everything, and the future remains uncertain, although a few families have managed to emigrate to North America.  The family of Hibba, 16, has applied to live in the United States, but she says:

“I don’t know how I will feel about living in America, seeing the American flag every day. These are the people who destroyed my country, and they are over there across the ocean living a good life. They destroy things, then they forget about it and have a good supper and watch television. And I will be among them, and will have to get along with hem for the good of my family. I don’t know if I can do that.


I have nothing in common with American children. How could I? They are raised up with peace and fun and security. They have nothing to worry about. We are raised with war and fear. It’s a big difference. They won’t know how to talk to me, and I will have nothing to say to them. Except, maybe, that they should keep heir soldiers at home.”

Children of War concludes with a two-page glossary and a “For Further Information” page that contains web addresses for organizations having some connection with Iraq and/or refugees.

Ellis, Deborah. Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees. Groundwood Books, 2009. 128 pp. ISBN 978-0-88899-908-5. $12.95.

No, that’s not a spelling error in Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan. The word really is “Mor,” and it’s the Pushto word for “mother”. Pushto (sometimes spelled Pashto) is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Wanting Mor is Khan’s second YA novel for middle school readers, the first being Dahling, If You Luv Me, Would You Please, Please Smile. Now out of print, Dahling remains a good read, and it was, I believe, the first Canadian YA book to feature a central character who is Muslim. 

Middle school girls who enjoyed Deborah Ellis’s “Parvana” trilogy, Breadwinner, Parvana’s Journey and Mud City, will want to read Wanting Mor. Khan’s book is set shortly after the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 while the period setting for Elis’s trilogy was the time of Taliban rule; however, conditions for girls in Afghanistan have not improved significantly.

Wanting Mor’s contents informally divide themselves into two parts. The book begins in a poor, rural Afghani village where Jameela’s mother has just died from an undefined illness. Jameela’s opium smoking father decides that Kabul offers better employment opportunities, but, as it tuns out, Baba (Dad) was really thinking more of his young daughter’s being employed as someone’s servant than he was actually considering working himself. Eventually Baba marries an older, property-owning widow who easily assumes the wicked stepmother’s role. At his wife’s urging, Baba leads Jameela through the crowded Kabul streets where he deserts her in a market.

The book’s second portion finds Jameela in one of Kabul’s largest orphanages where, ironically, she finds “family.” Another bit of irony is that “Jameela” means “beautiful,” but this young girl was born with a cleft lip. She recalls her mother saying, “Jameela, if you can’t be beautiful you should at least be good.” The very army which had killed many members of Jameela’s extended family supplies the doctor whose surgical skills reconstruct Jameela’s face. In a closing “Author’s Note,” Khan explains that Wanting Mor “is fiction, but is based on a true incident.”

Khan provides a five-page glossary, and readers will need to refer to it. In some instances, a word’s meaning can be understood from context. For instance, when Jameela says, “I sit down on the edge of the charpaee,” the reader can guess that a charpaee is probably a bed-like structure. However, when, on the same page, the reader encounters, “Mor always said wailing was haram,” flipping to the glossary will be necessary to learn that “haram” means “forbidden.”

Khan, Rukhsana. Wanting Mor. Groundwood Books, 2009. 190 pp. ISBN 978-0-88899-862-0. $12.95.

We use them all the time, We sing them, text them, email them, write them, and speak them. Words! And most of us, especially those of us who have English as our natal language, simply take them for granted, even their peculiarities. Perhaps once, back in those days when we, as students, had to contend with spelling tests, we might have asked our teachers questions such as, “Why is the word ‘would’ pronounced exactly like ‘wood’ when ‘would’ has the letter ‘l’ in it?  Why do Canadians have ‘colour’ TVs while our American neighbours/neighbors have ‘color’ TVs. What do Americans have against the letter ‘u’ (or why do we Canadians keep inserting it into words)?

“Because that’s just the way it is,” might have been one of the responses you received from your teacher. However, the real answers are that, in the days when people spoke Middle English, that now silent “l” in “would” was actually pronounced. And the world can owe the missing “u” to the American lexicographer Noah Webster who was so proud of being an American that he thought that American English should look different from the English used elsewhere, especially that of America’s former colonizer.

Those two tidbits of information about the English language came from Gena K. Gorrell’s Say What? The Weird and Mysterious Journey of the English Language that deals with the history of the English language. Because the English language has evolved over numerous centuries, Say What? tells its story in a chronological fashion. Successive invasions of England by the Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans, among others, each contributed new words. The English language also seemed disinclined to discard “old” words when a new invader introduced another term for the same thing. For example, following the Viking onslaught, people could choose between using the older English-based term “hide” or the newer Norse-based word “skin” when talking about an animal’s exterior covering. Rather than abandoning one, they kept both words but gave each a slightly different meaning, thereby enhancing the subtlety of the language.

Additionally, as the British Empire expanded, those venturing out for commerce or conquest brought back new words that have added to the language’s richness. According to Gorrell, “More than seventy percent of all English words were born someplace other than England.” And English is by no means a stagnant language. Gorrell says that about a thousand new words were entering the English language each year in the early 1900s. However, by the end of the 20^th century, that number had climbed to nearly 20,000 new words per year, with changes in technologies being just one source of new words (think “apps”).

Say What? also provides fun word quizzes, captioned photographs, and fact boxes filled with interesting word trivia. As fellow Manitobans, I’m sure you can relate to the origins of the word “chauffeur.”

Back in the 1890s, only a few rich people had cars, and it took a while to get them going. The employee who was sent out ahead of time, to chauffer (warm up) the engine so it would run properly, was called a “chauffeur.”

Gorrell, Gena K. Say What? The Weird and Mysterious Journey of the English Language. Tundra Books, 2009, 146 pp. ISBN 978-0-88776-878-1.

Every word has a history, and while some words, like “meh,” (meaning “boredom”) have very short histories, the history of other words, such as “axle,” can be traced back thousands of years. Etymology, or a word’s history, is the stuff of Mark Abley’s Camp Fossil Eyes: Digging for the Origin of Words. The book’s premise is that Alex Boswell, 13, and his sister, Jillian, 15, are attending a month long summer camp while their parents are relocating the family’s home. Initially, quite grumpy because the family’s relocation means making new friends, Jillian eventually comes to share Alex’s love of the camp. Camp Fossil Eyes is a place to study the fossils not of prehistoric creatures but those of words. Each day finds the campers in a different language “dig”: Indigenous Languages, Recent Words, Old English, French, Old Norse, Dutch, Latin, Persian, Spanish, Greek and Indo European.

Gorrel shares the information about specific word histories in two ways. Firstly, the teens include the information in the content of their e-mails to their parents. Secondly, the camp’s director generates memos, “From the Desk of Dr. James Murray,” in which he provides more detailed explanations of two or three words from the language of the campers’ most recent expedition. I will admit that I did find the two devices somewhat contrived and the plot line forced, but I did what all kids do when they’re reading and come to “boring bits” - they skip them. For me, the appeal of Camp Fossil Eyes is in its explanations of the origins of particular words. For example, at first glance, the name “sockeye” salmon appears to be the combination of two other words, “sock” and “eye.” Perhaps the first person who caught one got socked in the eye as s/he reeled it in? No, the fish’s name actually comes from the Salish people of the Pacific Northwest who called this fish “su-key” which meant “red fish.”

A sequel to CAMP FOSSIL EYES may be forthcoming as another camp will be held in August, and there are yet unexplored dig sites, including the areas for Italian, Japanese, German and African American English.

Abley, Mark. Camp Fossil Eyes: Digging for the Origin of Words. Illustrated by Mark Abley. 131 pp. ISBN 978-1-55451-180-8. $12.95.

Now retired from the Faculty of Education, the University of Manitoba,
Dave Jenkinson edits the reviewing journal CM: CANADIAN REVIEW OF MATERIALS - www.umanitoba.ca/cm

Email: jenkinso@ms.umanitoba.ca