A Sky Full of Song

February 15, 2023
In 1905, a family fleeing pogroms comes to rural North Dakota. Shoshana loves Liubashevka, her village in what's now Ukraine, though she misses her barely remembered father and older brother, off in "Nordakota." Liubashevka is getting dangerous for Jews, though: Cossacks gave Mama a head injury, and if Papa and 17-year-old Anshel were here, they'd be conscripted into the tsar's army. So they journey to America, Shoshana sneakily acquiring a kitten en route. With Shoshana, older sister Libke, and the 3-year-old twins, Papa's prairie dugout is crowded, but it's good to have the family together again. Still, Shoshana feels the constant pressure of being different: Her Yiddish-speaking family isn't allowed credit at the general store, and the bullying boys at the one-room schoolhouse call her hateful slurs. Wouldn't it just be easier to celebrate Christmas? Wouldn't the boys be nice if she just wasn't Jewish anymore? Frequent parallels to the Little House series accentuate how different Shoshana's experience is from the White, Christian, mythically American lives of her classmates. A friendly interaction with a Dakota girl allows Shoshana to feel anger for the displaced Dakota (though she doesn't ponder the relationship between that displacement and her own family's safe refuge). A moving, gently kind coming-to-America story. A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love. (author's note, references) (Historical fiction. 9-12)

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February 20, 2023
In 1905, after her mother is injured in yet another attack on Jews by the tsar’s soldiers, 11-year-old Shoshana, her three sisters, and their mother hasten their plans to travel from Liubashevka, their village in Ukraine, to America. They’ll join Shoshana’s brother and father in North Dakota, where they’ve spent the past three years starting a farm, having themselves fled to avoid her brother’s conscription into the tsar’s army. Though Shoshana aches for her community and the silvery white birches of her homeland, her first experience of a prairie sunset pulls her to the unfamiliar terrain. As she learns about the U.S. government’s displacement of the Dakota people, Shoshana compares the act to the Russian Empire’s treatment of Jews, becoming keenly aware that this displacement made her family’s resettlement possible. The ignorance, mockery, and cruelty Shoshana and her family endure, including antisemitic slurs and physical assault, create painful conflicts between Shoshana’s pride in her identity and her desire to fit in. Meyer (Skating with the Statue of Liberty) layers richly detailed depictions of Jewish traditions, stunning descriptions of the landscape, and a highly sympathetic narrator to convey an underreported historical arc. Protagonists present as white. Back matter contextualizes the well-researched book’s history. Ages 8–12. Agent: Rena Rossner, Deborah Harris Agency.

June 1, 2023

Gr 4-8-In 1905, 11-year-old Shoshana and her mother and sisters experience antisemitic violence and leave Ukraine for the United States. She arrives in North Dakota and moves into a dugout with her father and brother, who have been working to "prove up" their homestead. Shoshona and her father connect as he teaches her to play his fiddle. While her faith is important to her, Shoshona wants to fit in and is willing to participate in school activities related to Christmas to do this. Ultimately, it's her connections to her faith, family, and father's fiddle that give her the confidence to be fully herself. As she gets to know her new home, Shoshona does encounter two Dakota children and observes them being treated unfairly by members of her pioneer community. The problematic nature of settler colonialism is acknowledged through first-person narration from a child's perspective. Shoshona questions why people were moved off the land so that she and her family could homestead on it. This engaging title does include usage of several antisemitic slurs that would have commonly been used at the time, without preparing readers for those terms or explaining that they are not acceptable words to use today. VERDICT Solid historical fiction that fleshes out the diversity of the pioneer experience. Pair with books like Louise Erdrich's Birchbark House or Linda Sue Park's Prairie Lotus.-Kristin L. Anderson

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