Is It Night or Day?

by Fern Schumer Chapman

Hardcover, 2010

Status

Available

Call number

J F CHA

Publication

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) (2010), 224 pages

Description

In 1938, Edith Westerfeld, a young German Jew, is sent by her parents to Chicago, Illinois, where she lives with an aunt and uncle and tries to assimilate into American culture, while worrying about her parents and mourning the loss of everything she has ever known. Based on the author's mother's experience, includes an afterword about a little-known program that brought twelve hundred Jewish children to safety during World War II.

Barcode

3830

Awards

Sydney Taylor Book Award (Mass Import -- Pending Differentiation)
Volunteer State Book Award (Nominee — Middle School — 2013)
The Best Children's Books of the Year (Nine to Twelve — 2011)
Illinois Reads (9-12 — 2013)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Kids (Fiction for Older Readers — 2010)

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member runningirish
Young Jewish girl leaves her small town in German to move to Chicago.
LibraryThing member asomers
This was a compelling read. It is definitely worth adding to the school's Holocaust fiction section.
LibraryThing member prkcs
In 1938, Edith Westerfeld, a young German Jew, is sent by her parents to Chicago, Illinois, where she lives with an aunt and uncle and tries to assimilate into American culture, while worrying about her parents and mourning the loss of everything she has ever known. Based on the author's mother's
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experience, includes an afterword about a little-known program that brought twelve hundred Jewish children to safety during World War II.
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LibraryThing member ewyatt
Chapman tells a fictionalized version of her mother's story of coming to America from Germany. She was part of a rescue program that brought Jewish children from Germany to the U.S. in the late 1930s. Edith lives with her uncle's family in Chicago and has a tough time dealing with the separation
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from her family and figuring out life in America.
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LibraryThing member loveofreading
Is It Night or Day? is a beautifully written and touching story for YA readers set during World War II. Fern Schumer Chapman tells mother's story of how she was sent to America by her parents to have her best chance at life. This novel is an excellent choice for students studying World War II,
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particularly because it brings to life America's One Thousand Children project; a virtually unheard of, but heroic and extraordinary humanitarian effort to save German children during the Nazi regime.

Edith's story, like all wartime stories, is tragic. But the story is told through the eyes of a little girl with hope, strength, and an inspiring resilience. The language and content is clean, though the novel does mention suicide. Edith's mother becomes depressed early in the novel and is caught by Edith stringing a rope in the attic. Ultimately, this is not how her mother dies, but this moment in the plot is a notable content flag.

Is It Night or Day? offers readers a unique view into the effects of the war on German and Jewish people. I very much enjoyed reading this novel and recommend it for both educational and personal uses. My copy of the book includes bonus material, including a discussion guide and a real story of how Edith and another emigrant child are reunited after the novel was published.

4 Stars
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LibraryThing member linda.marsheells
This author has written other books, on this subject, which would be more geared to adults, THIS would be enlightening and should be required reading for teens.
Edith was considered to be one of the lucky ones who was able to escape the horrors of WW2 and move to the U.S., part of a large group
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shipped here. Torn from the comfort of loved ones, homes, lives they knew and sent to an unknown land where an unknown language was spoken, and put in homes with unknown 'new family'.
To grow up with so many unanswered questions, to be so misunderstood was more psychologically damaging than realized at the time. Yes, lives were saved but as what mental cost? Yet better to live like this than to be taken by cattle cars to their deaths.
THIS book was written from Ediths point of view as a 10 year old and the following years.
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LibraryThing member benuathanasia
Decent, but forgettable.

ISBN

0374177449 / 9780374177447
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