Language: PG (17 swears, 0 ‘f’); Mature Content: G; Violence: PG-13 (beatings, murder, war crimes)
BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS - ESSENTIAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
17yo Cristian and his family are barely keeping life together. Living under Ceausescu’s Communist dictatorial regime in 1989 Romania is degrading to body and soul. Then one day he is summoned to an office and given a choice – start informing on the American ambassador where your mother works as a cleaner, or be prosecuted for the crimes that others have revealed about you. Eyes are always watching everywhere in Romania, and Cristian decides his voice will be heard in a positive way. As other communist countries start falling, Cristian decides to sneak his journal to the American ambassador and hopefully word will get out. Then the revolution starts in Romania – Cristian may die if he joins, but how can he not?
OMG – While I knew in giant strokes the story of the Romanian Revolution – it is history of my own life time – I had absolutely no idea the extent of Ceausescu’s villainy. Sepetys includes many pages of resources of source material and information about her conversations with Romanians who lived this history – including the very famous gymnast, Nadia Comaneci, who manage to cross the border just before the revolution exploded. Will students embrace this? If they’ve read Refugee by Gratz, they can certainly be pointed towards this as a next step. And bring this to the attention of your history and geography teachers who can certainly suggest it to their students. Intense, powerful, tearful.
Cindy, Library Teacher, MLS
Book was loaned from libro.fm for an honest review; narrated by Edoardo Ballerini and Ruta Sepetys
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