A Journey To The New World by Kathryn Lasky

Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction ( Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction-a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.įive years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. In the course of these inspiring events, Mem herself almost gives up, but a sense of humor and her hopes for the future carry her through the worst of them.

Mem's story is one of incredible courage in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles, but it is also a story of real people with all their foibles, who refuse to give up no matter what happens. Almost as bad as the journey was what the travelers found when it was over. Mem, one of the 34 children among the 102 people on board, tells the story in diary entries. The Pilgrims, as they came to be known, traveled in a small cargo ship, the Mayflower, for two miserable months of bad food, unfit drinking water, vicious storms, and sheer boredom on a leaky old vessel that had never been intended for human cargo and lacked even the most basic amenities.

In this entry in the Dear America series, subtitled ``The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple,'' Lasky (She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head!, 1995, etc.) demonstrates how vigorous historical fiction can enliven the facts found in most textbooks.

A Journey To The New World by Kathryn Lasky