The Entertainer and the Dybbuk by Sid Fleischmann

It has taken a long time for Fleischmann to write a Holocaust story--long enough for him to write more than sixty other books. I can understand his reluctance. I lived in Poland for almost a year a short train ride away from Auschwitz. I never visited. The train would stop there on the way to Krakow, and I would watch that notorious building glide slowly past the window as we neared the station. The ghosts of the Jewish dead are everywhere there. I felt the horror of it on my skin and in the air I breathed. I visited the Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter in Krakow where Schindler's List was filmed. I read Elie Wiesel with tears streaming down my cheeks. But to Auschwitz I could not go.
Fleischmann does not set his tale in the death camps or the crowded ghettos but in recently reopened entertainment halls found in the skeletal remains of post-war European cities. A second-rate ventriloquist finds himself possessed by a dybbuk, the spirit of a murdered Jewish child. The dybbuk makes the ventriloquist famous, becoming the voice of his wooden sidekick. As Europe tries to forget the war -"The war's history. Yesterday's newspapers" protests the ventriloquest - the dybbuk has unfinished business, "Not for me. I placed a want ad. Let me look at the audience". The dybbuk is using the ventriloquist's rise to fame as a vehicle to hunt down the SS officer who killed him.
Despite being a short book, The Entertainer is funny, tragic, and thought provoking. The dybbuk is a self-assured, witty, and intelligent boy who does not play the role of pathetic victim. He cries at night and calls the name of his murdered sister, but he hunts his prey with a shrewd and unrelenting determination. He is much stronger than the almost hapless Freddie he possesses.
Freddie learns more about the world and himself through his friendship with the dybbuk. He is "dimly aware" of the atrocities commited by the Nazis, but like many, Freddie cannot comprehend the extent "But so many?". He learns that the dead boy once saved his life but still cannot allow himself to be possessed by a Jew, "When I was growing up, I never saw a Jew. I thought they all wore horns and tails". When the dybbuk refuses to perform on Friday nights and Saturdays, people begin to think he is Jewish. His fiance is let down when he tells her he is not actually Jewish, "How disappointing! Polly exclaimed. Can you imagine me dragging a Jewish husband home to Alabama. Wow!". A Jew for her is an exotic being complete with charming accessories, "Don't you think we'll look heavenly under the canopy thing?". Freddie moves from being an uninformed anti-semitic to someone well versed in Jewish life. When he mets Polly's uncle, the well-known racist of the family, Freddie is surprised to find himself offended when the uncle refuses to shake hands.
Fleischmann was finally ready to write his story of the Holocaust when he discovered a way to incorporate the Jewish sense of humor through the dybbuk and thus a glimmer of hope. However, for me, it is Freddie's slow dawning of friendship, admiration and understanding for the dybbuk which allows Fleischmann to let in "the occasional shaft of sunlight" to yet another dark chapter of man's inhumanity to man.

If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko

This is the new one from the acclaimed author of Al Capone does my Shirts (which I haven't read). I wasn't "felled" (sorry) by it, but I read it in one sitting. It's the story of a couple of misfits, Kirtsen and Walk, at an expensive white private high school in San Fransisco. Kirsten is white and rich but overweight and therefore not a member of the "in" crowd. Walk is Black and attending the school on a scholarship.

A couple of things brought this up short for me. First, I have a problem with the femme fatale of the book who seems too cliche for me. This is Brianna, the rich, beautiful, blonde and popular clique leader. Her mother is big on the PTO and at one point cancels the school's talent show because her daughter cannot take part. During lunch, Brianna askes Kirsten, who she knows to have an eating disorder, to lift up her shirt so they can compare stomachs. When she leaves, she pushes her half finished pizza toward Kirsten, "I think Kirsten is too thin...So here...Fatten up" (90). Maybe it has been too long since high school for me but, really, that mean? Brianna actually goes out of her way to torture Matteo, whose mother cleans house for Brianna's family, because she knows she "owns" him.

My other issue is that there are too many messages in this book: eating disorders, divorce, infidelity, honesty, and more. At times, I didn't know which message to focus on.

However, these can be overlooked because the novel does one thing well - race. This novel asks a lot of questions of young readers. What does it mean to be a low income or even middle income kid at a school swamped in over-privaleged white kids? How do you create authentic friendships with these students when your mother tells you, "Race doesn't matter...except for every hour of every day" (37). It also asks the reader to question stereotypes, even ones people have about members of their own race. Walk has a cousin, Jamal, who seems to be going down the wrong path. Jamal arrives at Walk's apartment in a black SUV, pulling a suitcase, "Got some product to show you," Jamal tells Walk. "Really fine stuff." Walk assumes the worst and replies, "I don't do this stuff, Jamal" (60). It turns out he is selling laundry detergent to make enough money to attend the same school as Walk. "Isn't anybody doesn't need soap. It's the American dream, man, right here. I've been to a weekend. They told me all about it" (61). The heartbreaking thing - and I admire Choldenko for not making everything work out OK in the end - is that Jamal gets in to the school but cannot make enough money to supplement his scholarship. The only students of color at the school have either a full scholarship or are being subsidized by a white person. Will kids be savvy enough to see that the American dream doesn't work for everyone, especially those who most need it to be true? I wish Choldenko had made this the central message instead of making it difficult to find among all the others.