- historical fiction based in Lithuania under Russian occupation, who want to obliterate anything Lithuanian, including their very language
- themes include: book smuggling, courageous patriotism, faithfulness, & friendship
- convo: some superstitions mentioned, soldiers occasionally hit people, hangings are threatened (but don’t occur), whippings are mentioned (one of a teen boy, and described), soldiers set fire to homes, intense scenes of chasing/fleeing, a girl wonders if she’ll be tortured for information (she isn’t), soldiers try to drown people by holding their heads under water (one event, toward the end)
- religion: very little religious content overall, an instance of a soldier beating people at a church while one woman “prays to the God she’s trying to defend”
Type: chapter book
Ages: 11+
Author: Jennifer A. Nielsen
“Worse. He banned the idea of Lithuania. We were all to become Russian. To speak like Russians, and especially, to think like Russians. Lithuania was to be erased from the map.”
Not only do we rarely read a story based in Lithuania, but this book also gives us (who live in countries with more freedoms) a powerful reminder of the privileges we have. As we walk (or, in many cases, run) in the shoes of the main character, we experience her angst when her parents are taken, her anger at the occupiers, and her confusion in understanding what her parents were doing. With the help of new friends, she begins to grasp the seriousness of what the Russians were doing to her people, her heritage.
“How do you destroy a people? You take away their culture. And how is that done? You must take their language, their history, their very identity.”
There were some strong plot twists well done for the intended age group, and I can happily recommend this to families looking for clean, well-written historical fiction.
One note to parents: Some readers have expressed concern that Nielsen inserted liberal agenda elements into at least one of her newer books, which I have not read. This review is for this book only, and I will update here if I can confirm the concern.
One more thematic quote to end with! —
“It’s our books. Our language, our culture, our identities are inscribed in every word. As long as we have our books, we cannot be crushed, we cannot be forgotten. Because of our books, we will not be erased from our own history. We will remember who we are, all that we stand for, and all that we will fight for and continue fighting for until the day we see the last Cossack soldier leave this land. If you want revenge for what they have done here, then tonight gather your family around you by the firelight and read. Learn. Create ideas of your own and spread them to others. It will be proof that we are winning.”