Lesléa Newman
History was always my Least. Favorite. Subject. I wasn't interested. It was beyond my bubble of who I interact with. And...it bored me. Now, over the last 2 years, I have found myself becoming more interested in historical events because I discovered that I actually REALLY enjoy reading historical fiction. It's my new favorite genre. This came as a complete surprise to me because, history. Ew. That being said, it does still have to be pretty interesting to capture my attention.
"'Look, look.' Everyone pointed in the same direction as a great cheer arose. 'There she is.' 'Who?' Gittel asked. 'The Statue of Liberty,' said a man standing beside Gittel, as he waved his cap in the air and wept. 'She's welcoming us to America.'"
So, what did I think?
2 out of 5 Stars
Gittel's journey to America is not going according to plan. She and her mother are packing and saying goodbye to others in the beginning of the story. When they get to the ship that is supposed to take them to America, Gittel is granted passage, but her mother is not. She has an eye infection, and you weren't allowed to go if you had an illness or infection, for fear of spreading it. So, Gittel's mother gives her a slip of paper with an address for a family member in America, and sends her child on the ship to travel across the ocean on her own. Gittel makes it to America, but when she gets there, the paper is blank that her mother had given her, the ink smudged off. She ends up with her photo in the newspaper, and her family ends up finding her that way.
I had high hopes for this book. Because, I really don't know much about Ellis Island, unless you count that scene with Will Smith and Eva Mendes in the movie Hitch...and does that even really count?!? No. It doesn't. Throughout the story, I didn't know where she was coming from. In the Author's Note, I read that "Old Country" was sometimes Russia, sometimes Poland. I didn't really like all of the Russian? / Yiddish vocab sprinkled throughout the book, because it tripped me up while reading. In hind site, I should've read the glossary at the back so I had at least read the words before I came across them in the story. It felt like Gittel's journey should have been very sad and scary, but I felt that it didn't really come across that way. The most interesting part of the book for me was the Author's Note, which talked about the author's grandmother, and how Gittel's journey was based off of a combination of two true stories. I enjoyed reading more about the true stories that I did about Gittel's journey. It is a short enough book though, that it could be used as an opening discussion about Ellis Island, and immigration during that time period. For me though, the story was just, "meh".
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