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New York Times
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Two Children's Literature Giants on World War II Rites of Passage
If you think there's nothing new to say about World War II, these two works by children's literature giants — and immigrants to America — will prove you wrong. The Caldecott medalist Uri Shulevitz's final book, following his death at age 89 in February, is a riveting companion to his award-winning memoir 'Chance: Escape From the Holocaust' (2020), and a story that stands on its own. 'When I was little,' begins THE SKY WAS MY BLANKET: A Young Man's Journey Across Wartime Europe (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 160 pp., $19.99, ages 10 and up), 'I couldn't fall asleep unless I had a piece of bread under my pillow. Why? you may ask. Because I was born in 1915.' Yehiel Szulewicz, the youngest of four boys growing up in a time of hunger in a devoutly religious Jewish home in Żyrardów, Poland, chafes at his father's strictness. 'When you've got nothing,' he thinks, 'use what you've got.' Wit and deception get him free entry to the local cinema and even a trip to Warsaw. But he longs to see more of the world — and so, at age 15, he leaves home, not realizing he will never see his parents again. Yehiel shaves his sidelocks but still embraces his Jewish identity. As he crosses Europe by foot and train, he finds food, work and mentors in Jewish communities in Czechoslovakia, Vienna and Italy. When the Nazis gain power, he moves to Paris, then Spain, where he joins a Polish brigade fighting Franco's fascism. From there he ends up imprisoned in a work camp in France. World War II has begun. Yehiel escapes and joins a Jewish branch of the French Resistance. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Melting Point' revisits the push to move Europe's Jews to Texas
When Rachel Cockerell embarked on her first book, she thought she was writing a conventional family memoir. She was in her 20s, unpublished and stuck at home in London during the pandemic. Intrigued by conversations with distant Jewish cousins at a family reunion, she had begun to research her grandmother, Fanny Jochelman, who had come from Russia to London as a child to a sprawling, chaotic house at 22 Mapesbury Rd., later raising her own four children there. Cockerell didn't know how radically her project and its form would change. When the unclassifiable 'Melting Point,' about a forgotten chapter of Jewish migration in the early 20th century, was published last year in England, it was met with excitement and acclaim, including being longlisted for the prestigious Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize. It was published in the United States on Tuesday by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
