Newbery Medal-winning author Jerry Spinelli (Maniac McGee, Stargirl) paints a vivid picture of the streets of the Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II, as seen through the eyes of a curious, kind, heartbreakingly naïve orphan with many names. His name is Stopthief when people shout "Stop! Thief!" as he flees with stolen bread. Or it's Jew, "filthy son of Abraham," depending on who's talking to him. Or, maybe he's a Gypsy, because his eyes are black, his skin is dark, and he wears a mysterious yellow stone around his neck. His new friend and protector Uri forces him to take the name Misha Pilsudski and to memorize a made-up story about his Gypsy background so that no one will mistake him for a Jew and kill him. Misha, a very young boy, is slow to understand what's happening around him. When he sees people running, he thinks it's a race. Nazis (Jackboots, as the children call them) marching through the streets appear to him as a delightful parade of magnificent boots. He wants to be a Jackboot! (Uri smacks him for saying this.) He compares bombs to sauerkraut kettles, machine guns to praying mantises, and tanks to "colossal gray long-snouted beetles." The story of Misha and his band of orphans trying to survive on their own would have a deliciously Dickensian quality, if it weren't for the devastation around them--people hurrying to dig trenches to stop Nazi tanks, shops exploding in flames, the wailing of sirens, buzzing airplanes, bombs, and human torture. Spinelli has written a powerfully moving story of survival--readers will love Misha the dreamer and his wonderfully poetic observations of the world around him, his instinct to befriend a Jewish girl and her family, his impulse to steal food for a local orphanage and his friends in the ghetto, and his ability to delight in small things even surrounded by the horror of the Holocaust. A remarkable achievement. (Ages 11 and older) --Karin Snelson


From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-In Warsaw in 1939, a boy wanders the streets and survives by stealing what food he can. He knows nothing of his background: Is he a Jew? A Gypsy? Was he ever called something other than Stopthief? Befriended by a band of orphaned Jewish boys, he begins to share their sleeping quarters. He understands very little of what is happening. When the Nazi "Jackboots" march into the town, he greets them happily, admires their shiny boots and tanks, and hopes he can join their ranks someday. He eventually adopts a name, Misha, and a family, that of his friend Janina Milgrom, a girl he meets while stealing food in her comfortable neighborhood. When the Milgroms are forced to move into the newly created ghetto, Misha cheerfully accompanies them. There, he is one of the few small enough to slip through holes in the wall to smuggle in food. By the time trains come to take the ghetto's residents away, Misha realizes what many adults do not-that the passengers won't be going to the resettlement villages at the journey's end. Reading this unusual, fresh view of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of a child who struggles to understand the world around him is like viewing a poignant collage of Misha's impressions. He shares certain qualities with Spinelli's Maniac Magee, especially his intense loyalty to those he cares about and his hopeful, resilient spirit. This historical novel can be appreciated both by readers with previous knowledge of the Holocaust and by those who share Misha's innocence and will discover the horrors of this period in history along with him.Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CACopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
He can't remember anything before stealing food from street shoppers. People mistake him for a Jew, but he's really a Gypsy. Day by day Warsaw, Poland, becomes more dangerous as "jackboots" (Nazis) take over every aspect of city life. When this young boy is "adopted" by an adult street person, he learns about orphans, angels, carousel horses, and survival in this dark time in history. Ron Rifkin uses a gentle, somber voice that fits the reflective recollection of the main character's flashback into time. His nuances help readers laugh in all the right places, proving that even in the grayest landscape, hope and laughter can be found. J.M.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Reviewed with Uri Orlev's Run, Boy, Run. Holocaust survivor stories for teens run the risk of being either too brutal or too sentimental. These two novels avoid sensationalizing the violence because, in each case, the protagonist is a child too young to understand what's going on, which distances the horror. In both books the child is saved, but there's no radiant uplift about rescuers. Yes, some heroes do hide the children and help them, but as John Auerbach shows in his adult autobiographical story collection, The Owl and Other Stories [BKL S 15 03], which centers on escaping the Warsaw ghetto, luck and wild coincidence were a large part of what enabled a few to live. Part survival adventure, part Holocaust history, these novels tell their story through the eyes of a Polish orphan on the run from the Nazis. Orlev is a Holocaust survivor, and his award-winning novels about being a child in the Warsaw ghetto, including The Man from the Other Side (1991), are widely read. This new story is not based on his own experience, but it does come from real life--the experience of an illiterate ghetto survivor who escaped into the Polish countryside, stealing, foraging, begging, working. The boy is nurtured by some and hated by many. He hides his circumcision and invents a Catholic identity; he forgets his real name, his family, and the street where he lived. In one unforgettable incident, he loses his right arm because a Polish doctor refuses to operate on a Jew. He survives, immigrating to Israel, where Orlev hears him tell his story. The narrative is simple and spare, factual about everything from hunting with a slingshot to making a fire with a piece of glass, and it's always true to the viewpoint of a boy who thinks he is "about nine."In contrast, Spinelli's narrative is manic, fast, and scattered, authentically capturing the perspective of a young child who doesn't know if he's a Jew or a Gypsy; he has never known family or community. He lives by stealing; his name may be Stopthief. Unlike Orlev's protagonist, this boy lives in the ghetto, where the daily atrocities he witnesses-- hanging bodies, massacres, shootings, roundups, transports--are the only reality he knows. His matter-of-fact account distances the brutality without sensationalizing or lessening the truth. He first finds shelter with a gang of street kids, where one fierce older boy protects him, invents an identity for him, and teaches him survival skills. Later he lives with a Jewish family. The history is true, so although Spinelli's narrator is young, the brutal realism in the story makes this a book for older children. Both novels end with what seems to be a contrived escape, though in Orlev's story, the ending is true. Add these stirring titles to the Holocaust curriculum; the youth of the protagonists allows them to ask questions and get answers that will help readers learn the history. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. Happy. Fast. Filthy son of Abraham.

He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels. He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi some day, with tall shiny jackboots and a gleaming Eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.

Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable -- Nazi-occupied Warsaw of World War II -- and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young orphan.

Author Biography: Jerry Spinelli has won the most prestigious awards in the industry, including the Newbery Medal for Maniac Magee and a Newbery Honor Award for Wringer.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Conveying a sometimes-astonishing na vet in light of the brutality seen through the eyes of an orphan boy, Rifkin breathes emotion into Spinelli's novel, which is set in Poland during the Holocaust. In 1939 Warsaw, a runty, ragged street thief who doesn't even know his name or if he ever had a family finds himself taken under the wing of a sharp, slightly older boy named Uri. The younger boy, now called Misha, learns a new, even more wretched way of life under Nazi occupation. He witnesses murder, torture and hatred firsthand, as taken out on the Jews by the cruel soldiers he knows as Jackboots. He further hones his scrappy survival skills, becomes part of a Jewish family in the ghetto and, miraculously, continues to muster hope as the months and years pass. Via Rifkin's cool yet compelling delivery, listeners discover-right along with an always wide-eyed Misha-some of the horrors that many innocent people suffered during this dark era of history. Though some listeners may be puzzled by Misha's detached air and consistent lack of awareness, Rifkin succeeds in making the audio experience an ultimately enlightening one. Ages 10-up. (Sept. 2003) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Children's Literature - Susie Wilde

Newbery-winning author Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed is different than any other books. Its success is achieved primarily through the main character whom Spinelli has described as "a little kid with a big heart...who finds himself trapped in a walled-in nightmare." At the beginning of the book, this young boy has no background, no name, and only one memory. "I am running. That's the first thing I remember. Running...Someone is chasing me. "Stop! Thief!" The boy refers to himself as "Stopthief" when he meets a bunch of homeless boys on the streets of pre-Nazi Warsaw. Uri, the leader of the group, gives him the name Misha Pilsudski and an invented background. When Misha describes the arrival of the Nazis, we begin to see how this character with no real history sees in a way that is strange, dispassionate, and chillingly beautiful. "They were magnificent. There were men attached to them, but it was as if the boots were wearing the men.... A thousand of them swinging up as one, falling like the footstep of a single, thousand-footed giant." Spinelli's brilliant perspective continues as Misha, searches for a home and follows a wealthy beautiful young Jew, Janina Milgrom, into the Warsaw Ghetto. Now Misha is part of a parade that was "different from the grand parade of the Jackboots! The thump of a thousand Jackboots was now the shuffle of ragged shoes; instead of the roar of tanks, the crickety click of cart wheels." Twice more Misha describes parades as Janus Korczak's orphans are led out of the ghetto singing and an endless parade seen in the yellow light of trains bound for the extermination camps. There is a beauty and a sensory strength that forms a contrast with the stark ugliness we knowMisha faces. Spinelli's genius is that he stays firmly rooted in his viewpoint character who is uncomprehending, innocent and impersonally recounts the horrors he sees. 2003, Knopf, Ages 11 up.

VOYA - Angelina Benedetti

When readers first meet the orphan narrator, he is running. "Stop!" and Thief!" are words so familiar to him that he takes them as his name. Stopthief is one of a band of boys living on the streets and in the stables of Warsaw before the Nazi occupation. This devastating narrative follows his journey from the streets into the Ghetto and through the end of the war. Stopthief is renamed Misha by Uri, the leader of the orphan band, and told that he is a Russian gypsy, not a Jew. Misha is awestruck by the "Jackboots" who take over the city. After he is herded into the Jewish Ghetto, he steals food for his adopted family and the local orphanage. As conditions in the ghetto worsen, his ability to smuggle in and out of its walls turns him from thief to savior. Spinelli's works features more than one irrepressible hero who rises above the social confines of his or her day. In placing such a character in one of history's darkest hours, he challenges readers to see the Holocaust anew, to experience it in the moment. Misha is both insider and outsider, without history and without knowledge, and through his eyes the reader knows the disorientation, the confusion, and the mounting horror of a people who, unlike the modern reader, do not know what is to come. It is too simple to call him an archetype. His daring, part courage and part na￯﾿ﾽvet￯﾿ﾽ, comes at a cost, and only in the book's final chapters does one come to understand the price of his dissociation. Neither oppressor or oppressed, he is a tragic figure, ultimately alone despite his loyalty to Uri and to his adopted sister Janina. Spinelli creates a masterful achievement, a war story to be put alongside J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun and aliterary accompaniment to Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2003, Knopf, 208p., Ages 12 to 18.

Alan Review

Little Misha is known by many names throughout his life, names both given him by his adopted people and his cruel oppressors. Naturally searching for identity and acceptance, he gets swept up in humanity's greatest atrocity. Misha is an uneducated orphan in Warsaw, Poland. Adopted by smugglers and Jews, he learns to use his speed, wits, and small size to survive. He and his friends steal from the fortunate to keep alive, and through this, they create hope for themselves by embracing adventure, challenge, and charity. The story is told from Misha's naive point of view, making the story a perfect introduction to the events of the Holocaust for young adults. When the Jews begin to be subjected to terrible things, Misha doesn't understand. He sees the world with a child's eyes and has no way to process what is happening to him. Milkweed is heartbreaking, not only for its honest look at an abhorrent series of events, but also for its realistic portrayal of the toll these events take on a boy, his adopted family, and his misfit friends. The book successfully captures these people in all their frail humanity, their joy and follies, their triumphs and tragedies. 2003, Alfred A. Knopf, 224 pp. Ages young adult. Reviewer: Steve Rasmussen

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