ISBN 9780670014965
Published by Penguin Books, 2019
Genre/Format: Historical Fiction/Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook
Awards
National Jewish Book Awards: Children's and Young Adult Literature
Sydney Taylor Book Awards: Teen Readers
YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults: 2020
Reading Level Grades 9 and up (NoveList)
Plot Summary: Someday We Will Fly tells Lillia's story, the 15-year old daughter of circus acrobats who live in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. At the outset, Lillia recounts her parents' illegal acrobatic performance for their friends and colleagues. But the performance comes to an abrupt halt during a raid. Lillia and her sister Naomi are swept up by their father who then escape to their home, but Lillia's mom is nowhere to be seen. Assuming she has been taken to a concentration camp, the family of three resolve to continue with their evacuation plans. They make their way to Italy where they board a ship that will take them to Shanghai.
In Shanghai they move to Hongkou which is the center of Jewish refugee life in the city. There is little work, not much food, and they cobble together a family of sorts with their new neighbors and friends. Can Lillia, her father, and her sister remain a family in this new city? And how will they cope with this new life while barely able to feed and clothe themselves. Lillia makes some questionable choices to help her family, but are those choices worth it in the end?
Author Background: Rachel DeWoskin is an award-winning author and she teaches Creative Writing at the University of Chicago. In the 1990s she starred in a soap opera in China called Foreign Babes in Shanghai, which was the basis of her 2005 memoir of the same name. Her novel Big Girl Small was awarded the ALA Alex Award in 2012 (Eikenburg, 2013).
Critical Evaluation: Someday We Will Fly is a beautifully told story that starts in chaos and despair and ends in chaos and hope. DeWoskin's book was a fascinating and gripping imagining of life in Hongkou, the Shanghai home to Jewish refugees. She expertly spins a tale that forces you to feel as if you're standing in Lillia's shoes. You feel her sorrow, her fear, her frustration, her boredom, her anger and every other emotion in between.
Speed-Round Book Talk: How does a young Jewish refugee (and the daughter of circus acrobats!) from Poland adjust to her new home in 1940 Shanghai? Flip into Someday We Will Fly to find out!
Library Program: This would be a good book to feature in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Screenings of films like the one below, books with related themes for all levels and book clubs. will round out this educational week.
Potential Challenges: This book contains some mature scenes in which Lillia becomes a dancer for men's entertainment. She does no more than dance, but she is in an environment where other women do more than dance and Lillia contemplates doing so as well. There might be objections to this kind of behavior but there are many books in the library that detail much more graphic scenes. This book is important because of its subject matter and for that it should be in the library.
Reason for Inclusion: I’m excited to include this novel because Jewish refugees in Shanghai who fled the Holocaust is not a well-known subject. It's important for young adults to read about the many and varied ways the Holocaust impacted lives.
References
DeWoskin, R. (2019). Someday We Will Fly. Penguin Books.
c, J. (2013). Interview with Rachel DeWoskin: On Stardom in China, Award-Winning
Fiction and Judaism. Asian Jewish Life, (13). https://asianjewishlife.org/pages/articles/
AJL_Issue_13_Nov2013/AJL_Issue13_Interview-with-Rachel-DeWoskin.html
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