|
NEW
All Aboard for Dreamland 
Shu-Li and Tamara
The Heretic's Tomb
Honey Cake
The Eco-Diary of
Kiran Singer
Baad Animals
The Emerald Curse
Abby's Birds
Fairy Tale Feasts
Bamboo
What Happened This Summer
Nannycatch Chronicles
Crocodiles Say
If I Had a Million Onions
Zig Zag
The Clone Conspiracy
A Telling Time
For Sure For Sure
Floyd the Flamingo
The Sorcerer's Letterbox
The Bone Collector's Son
Rescuing Einstein's Compass
The Island of the Minotaur
The Alchemist's Portrait
The Sea King
The Jade Necklace
My Animal Firends
Aziz: The Storyteller
Pacific Tree Frogs
BACKLIST TITLES
Pigmalion
Strange Beginnings
Huevos Rancheros
Lucy and the Pirates
The Girl who Lost her Smile
Mama God, Papa God
Mr. Belinsky's Bagels
Wherever Bears Be
Where are my Onions?
The Zoo at Night
Maudie and the Children
| 
| Reviews | 
Honey Cake
by Joan Betty Stuchner, illustrated by Cynthia Nugent
ISBN 1-896580-37-8
|
"There are so many ways of being brave," David's father explains. Through
this straightforward and informative story of Jews in the Danish Resistance
during World War II, the youngest readers learn what life was like under
Nazi occupation. It's 1943 Copenhagen, where shortages of food and fuel make
it difficult to run the family bakery. Everyone seems to have secrets, even
ten-year-old David's older sister Rachel and their parents. When Papa sends
David to deliver some eclairs, the boy suspects it is more than a simple
errand but remains calm under pressure, knowing that he is contributing to
something larger than himself. While more happens to David than could
possibly happen to one ten-year-old boy, his tale conveys a wealth of
historical detail, from the famed horseback-riding King Christian to Victor
Borge's humor. Nugent's uneven pen-and-ink illustrations are jarring, but
the story itself moves along at a good clip. A fine offering
for readers not quite ready for Number the Stars. (recipe, afterword)
(Historical fiction. 6-9) --Kirkus Reviews July 15, 2008
There's something uplifting about this quiet portrayal
of the plight of Denmark's Jews in World War Two.
Seen through the eyes of a little boy, David, it traces
the hopes and fears of a typical Jewish family living
in Copenhagen during the 1940s. Cynthia Nugent’s
black and white sketches vividly bring to life Betty
Stuchner’s delicately woven story. Like Anne Frank,
David is an observer, and it is his childlike simplicity
which makes the actions of the so-called
sophisticated adult world, full of its injustices and inhumanity, look
incomprehensible. It's his thoughts on the little pleasures in life that
contrast so strongly with the cruel adult world, like the smell of Mama’s
freshly baked honey cake, which turn the apartment into a gingerbread
house, allowing everyone to forget, for a while, the bomber planes
droning over head and the soldiers on the street. -- By Richard Monte, Carousel
The art of storytelling by Olga Livshin in Jewesh Independent
Random House AJL newsletter Feb/Mar 2008 review
BC Bookworld by Louise Donnelly
How does one stand against tyranny? What's the true nature of bravery? Big questions for an early-reader chapter book, but Joan Betty Stuchner handles them with grace and honesty.
Stuchner's novel tells the fictional story of a young Jewish boy in Copenhagen during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. David Nathan and his friend Elsa are well aware of the war - food is scarce, soldiers are everywhere, air raids are frequent and frightening. But David is surprised to learn that his elder sister Rachel works for the Resistance, and is even more surprised to be asked to help by making an important delivery. While this episode is important, it's only one aspect of the novel's exploration of courage, resistance, and friendship. What I find most winning about Honey Cake are its depictions of those small gestures of daily life that offer another form of resistance: the quiet refusal to bend, the insistence upon humanity and generosity. Without preaching, Stuchner offers in the friendship between David and Elsa (who is Christian), and between their families, a depiction of tolerance and acceptance.
Stuchner's writing is clear and competent, but it rarely sings, and her ending is somewhat abrupt. On the whole, however, this is a well-constructed novel, with some finely developed images and motifs; Stuchner's bird imagery is picked up beautifully and subtly in the opening and closing illustrations.
Cynthia Nugent's pictures generally enliven the text, although one or two are rather wooden. The first illustration is most resonant for me: David reading Andersen's "The Nightingale," that tale by one of Copenhagen's most renowned storytellers about the need to be free. -- Quill & Quire, Saturday, March 29, 2008. Reviewed by Marnie Parsons
CM, Volume XIV Number 7, November 23, 2007
David Nathan and his family are living in Copenhagen in 1943 during the German occupation. While they are still able to operate their bakery, life is very different from before the German officers came to the city. David's sister, Rachel is working for the Resistance and one day David is asked by his father to make a special delivery of chocolate eclairs. He learns later that the eclairs contained a secret message and David realizes that he too has been working for the resistance. When there is news that the Germans are about to deport the Jews to concentration camps, David and his family are helped to escape to Sweden by their Christian friends, the Jensens.
This story of life in occupied Denmark during World War II is told in a gentle manner. There is no description of violence and the mistreatment of the Jewish people, yet there is an understanding of the kind of fear these people were living under - German soldiers constantly on the street corners, the soldiers coming into the school rooms cautioning children that they must be obedient to the German rule, air raid sirens and bombings in the neighbourhood.
This book would be a good introduction for young readers to how World War II affected some of the countries and the Jewish people in Europe. It would be appropriate for students in the elementary grades.
Thematic Links: World War II; Jews; Denmark - History Victoria Pennell --by Joan Betty Stuchner, Resource Links, Vol. 13, No. 1 (October 2007)
Honey Cake brings to life those fraught days in 1943 before the exodus of Jews from occupied Denmark. David Nathan dreams of a model train for his next birthday, but he receives a better gift when he and his family survive the flight to Sweden. Using everyday details, Vancouver teacher-story-teller Joan Betty Stuchner makes those long-past dark days seem scarily modern. Cynthia Nugent's illustrations, as always, add complexity and nuance. --By John Burns.
David Nathan's father is a baker, struggling to keep his business alive in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen. It is early September 1943 and so far the Jewish population has not been touched, but, by the end of the month, the Danish authorities learn that the Nazis intend to deport all their Jewish neighbours to concentration camps. In Honey Cake we see the incident through the eyes of young David and his friends. A very special errand that David's father sends him on, the safe delivery of a tray of chocolate eclairs, has its own part to play in the conspiracy in which the Danish people, rallying to the support of their Jewish neighbours, help many of them escape to Sweden. Lively David, brave Elsa and the warm-hearted and courageous Jensens bring alive, for younger readers, the fidelity and courage of the Danes and their almost miraculous rescue of so many. Cynthia Nugent's lively energetic sketches suggest the apprehension of a street filled with people as Nazi planes fly overhead, the emotion as the king rides through the streets of Copenhagen to encourage his people, or the family's bustle to prepare for their escape to Sweden. This is a valuable and attractive introduction to a difficult theme for young children, and David is a likeable and believable young hero.
Quill & Quire
How does one stand against tyranny? What's the true nature of bravery? Big questions for an early-reader chapter book, but Joan Betty Stuchner handles them with grace and honesty.
Stuchner's novel tells the fictional story of a young Jewish boy in Copenhagen during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. David Nathan and his friend Elsa are well aware of the war- food is scarce, soldiers are everywhere, air raids are frequent and frightening. But David is surprised to learn that his elder sister Rachel works for the Resistance, and is even more surprised to be asked to help by making an important delivery. While this episode is important, it's only one aspect of the novel's exploration of courage, resistance, and friendship. What I find most winning about Honey Cake are its depictions of those small gestures of daily life that offer another form of resistance: the quiet refusal to bend, the insistence upon humanity and generosity. Without preaching, Stuchner offers in the friendship between David and Elsa (who is Christian), and between their families, a depiction of tolerance and acceptance.
Stuchner's writing is clear and competent, but it rarely sings, and her ending is somewhat abrupt. On the whole, however, this is a well-constructed novel, with some finely developed images and motifs; Stuchner's bird imagery is picked up beautifully and subtly in the opening and closing illustrations. Cynthia Nugent's pictures generally enliven the text, although one or two are rather wooden. The first illustration is most resonant for me: David reading Andersen's "The Nightingale," that tale by one of Copenhagen's most renowned storytellers about the need to be free. -- Reviewed by Marnie Parsons (from the July 2007 issue), Quill & Quire. |
|
