VVMBookBlog

Sometimes we think that persecution of people who were Jewish happened only in Germany under the rule of Hitler and that was an isolated situation. I learned so much more last summer when I visited Berlin, Germany, and took a tour of the Jewish Museum Berlin. There I learned that Jewish people have been persecuted in many parts of the world for over 2000 years.

This book, Incantation, takes us back to the year 1500 during a time in Spain called the Spanish Inquisition. This was a time that many Jewish people were killed, but could avoid death by converting from Judaism to Christianity. These people were called conversos. Some conversos continued to follow their Jewish faith and traditions but in secret. And that’s the background for this story.

Estrella and Catalina are neighbors and friends, and can’t imagine their lives without each other. But then Catalina’s cousin, Andres, comes to live with Catalina’s family and things begin to change between the two friends, along with escalating political events in their town. Public book-burnings of Jewish books, people being killed when their secret religion is discovered, and Catalina’s jealousy of Estrella’s relationship with Andres lead Catalina to do something she can never undo.

I’ve only read one other book by Alice Hoffman–Green Angel–and I really couldn’t get into it. It was dark and depressing, and written in kind of a dream-like way that made it hard to connect with the story. I had the same feeling with this book–that I was reading it through some kind of dream filter, but the subject matter was so intense and I could really feel for Estrella and her struggles.

As in so many books I read for school, the topic of the Spanish Inquisition was another time in history I didn’t know much about. And again, a book opened up another part of our history for me, as well as showing me another time when people were tested by fellow human beings.

Jade is in high school and learning to cope with a panic disorder that developed in the last few years. She experiences panic attacks that leave her hyperventilating and fearing that she will die. Her ways of coping include regular sessions with Abe, her psychologist, and de-stressing by watching the webcams of the zoo located a couple blocks from her. She especially loves watching the elephants and the very human ways that they relate to each other.

But it’s on the webcam that she sees the young guy in the red jacket and a baby in the backpack. He looks pretty young, not much older than Jade. Is it his baby? Where is the mother? When she sees him on the webcam several more times, she just knows that “this is a story I’ll be part if.” Read it and see how Jade challenges her handicapping panic disorders in order to reach out to others and enhance her life.

Last week we tallied our VVMS votes for this year’s Maud Hart Lovelace reading list. Top of the list was Soldier X by Don Wulffson, a book about a 16-year-old boy fighting as a German soldier during WWII. The popularity of that book led to interest in Soldier Boys by Dean Hughes, Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo, and any other war fiction story we could find.

And now there’s another one to add to the list… Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata. The “war” this time was never a declared war, but was called the Vietnam Conflict, and the United States troops were involved in it from 1965-1975. But whether it was called a war or not, any returning Vietnam vet will tell you that the fighting was fierce, the battle conditions were horrible, and the casualties were high.

Originally a German shepherd bred to be a show dog and named Magnificent Dawn of Venus, a broken leg took Venus-now named Cracker–out of the dog show circuit and she came to live with 11-year-old Willie. But then Willie’s family had to move to an apartment–a no-big-dog apartment. When Willie saw the ad in the paper saying the Army needed dogs to go to Vietnam as scout and patrol dogs, Willie knew Cracker would be the best scout dog around.

Cracker was sent to Fort Benning where she met her dog handler, Rick Hanski, a new recruit from Wisconsin. The story takes us through the training process where the dogs are trained to locate booby traps, buried weapons, trip wires, people hiding, and any other obstacle that could injure soldiers on patrol in the jungles of Vietnam. Although they had a shaky start, both Rick and Cracker go on to “whip the world” in the missions they are sent out to do. The descriptions of the confrontations with the Vietcong enemy soldiers, gives a graphic look at what it was like to be a soldier in Vietnam.

The book is written from the perspective of Willie, Rick and in a weird way, even Cracker! The author, Cynthia Kadohata, included lots of research about war dogs, especially Vietnam war dogs. She also wrote Kira-Kira, a recent Newbery winner, and Weedflower. Another book on the subject of Vietnam war dogs is Letters from Wolfie by Patti Sherlock.