The Length of a String

by Elissa Brent Weissman

Hardcover, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

T F WEI

Publication

Dial Books (2018), 384 pages

Description

Juvenile Fiction. Juvenile Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:Imani is adopted, and she's ready to search for her birth parents. But when she discovers the diary her Jewish great-grandmother wrote chronicling her escape from Holocaust-era Europe, Imani begins to see family in a new way. Imani knows exactly what she wants as her big bat mitzvah gift: to find her birth parents. She loves her family and her Jewish community in Baltimore, but she has always wondered where she came from, especially since she's black and almost everyone she knows is white. Then her mom's grandmotherâ??Imani's great-grandma Annaâ??passes away, and Imani discovers an old journal among her books. It's Anna's diary from 1941, the year she was twelve and fled Nazi-occupied Luxembourg alone, sent by her parents to seek refuge in Brooklyn, New York. Anna's diary records her journey to America and her new life with an adoptive family of her own. And as Imani reads the diary, she begins to see her family, and her place in it, in a whole ne… (more)

Barcode

5644

Awards

Sydney Taylor Book Award (Honor Book — Middle Grade — 2019)

Language

Lexile

730L

User reviews

LibraryThing member HandelmanLibraryTINR
Imani is adopted, and she's ready to search for her birth parents. But when she discovers the diary her Jewish great-grandmother wrote chronicling her escape from Holocaust-era Europe, Imani begins to see family in a new way.
LibraryThing member jennybeast
One of the best books about the Holocaust that I have read in years, and that's saying something. 1) I love Imani's character, and her journey about her adoption/birth parents. 2) I think the thing I responded to so strongly was that the kids in this book are all going to Hebrew school and
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preparing for their Bar Mitzvahs and they are kind of bored and jaded about their history -- and then Anna's journal makes it all very immediate and real for them (and the readers) -- the impact was huge to see the characters react to it sort of reinforced my own reactions. 3) I didn't really think I was going to read this book, but from the moment I opened it, I just couldn't put it down. It's heartbreaking, empowering, thoughtful -- just extremely vivid and packs an emotional punch that makes you want to see where it's going. Spectacular.
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LibraryThing member lquilter
10yo review: "I loved this book!
i loved this book because I thought the plot was exciting. I thought it was cool to get to read her great-grandmothers diary! This is definitely a don't judge a book by it's cover/title. When I first looked at it I was like meh, but when I actually read it i was
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awesome!!!!! If you choose this book I hope you enjoy it!"
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ISBN

0735229473 / 9780735229471
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