28 Days

March 1, 2020

Gr 9 Up-Mira, a young Jewish woman surviving in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, does whatever she can to keep what's left of her family alive. Her father jumped to his death and her brother secured a spot among the hated Jewish police force, so Mira has only her grief-stricken mother and young sister, Hannah, to care for. After a bold young man saves her life while she's smuggling food from the Polish side of the wall, Mira can't seem to shake him from her mind. Happening upon him again and realizing he's part of the Jewish underground resistance, she refuses his invitation to join the group. But then the Ghetto is liquidated and all its inhabitants are sent to concentration camps. Mira, Hannah, and their mother are able to avoid capture, but how long can they live in the walls? And what will Mira do if she loses those she loves most? The brutality of the Nazi regime is starkly portrayed: Orphans march to their deaths, parents choose to give their children cyanide rather than watch them be murdered by their captors, and there is a particularly triggering scene of attempted rape. Safier also explores the power of stories in buoying people's hopes. Hannah's young sister weaves a tale about the 777 Islands that holds its own narrative thread throughout the novel. Though translations can sometimes lose a little beauty of the original language, the story Safier shares of the 28 days of Jewish resistance after the Aktion in the Warsaw Ghetto is powerful indeed. VERDICT A strong first purchase where historical fiction is in demand.-Abby Bussen, Muskego Public Library, WI

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2020
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Mira, 17, lives in the Warsaw Ghetto with her mother and sister. Her father is dead, and her brother is part of the Jewish Police and has little to do with his family. Conditions are terrible; food is very scarce, and one eats what one can get, even if it is a bit of non-kosher ham. To survive, Mira turns to smuggling items from outside the walls. Tighter restrictions close off even that source to her, and, to her horror, people are being transported to death camps. Mira uses her wits to keep her mother and sister safe, but the situation becomes hopeless. Eventually, she joins the resistance in the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto for the eponymous 28 days. Throughout this complex novel, rich in evocative detail, Mira's view evolves from a narrow focus on herself and her family to consideration of the larger community around her, reflected in her first-person narrative. Safier populates his novel with a variety of well-rounded fictional characters, as well as historical figures such as Rubinstein, the ghetto's jester, who posed as a madman in order to hurl insults at the Nazis, and Dr. Janusz Korczak, the director of the ghetto's orphanage, who chose to accompany the children in his care to their deaths. Although Mira is fictional, her story is real, a composite of the stories of those who were persecuted, suffered, and died.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)