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 Black Radishes is another book that is based on the experiences of someone in the author's family during World War II.  This kind of reality-based historical fiction often makes for an exciting, suspenseful story and Black Radishes is no exception.  According to the author's note, Susan Lynn Meyer's father, grandmother and aunt were able to escape from France after its occupation by the Nazis, so she had lots of first hand material to create this stirring novel.

Black Radishes story begins in Paris in March 1940.  As the German army gets closer to France, Gustave Becker, 11, and his parents, French Jews, firmly believe that the Maginot Line, the pride of France's border defense, will be able to hold them as bay.  But even in Paris things are changing and now Gustave is beginning to experience some anti-Semitic feelings among the people there.

But when his parents tell him that they are going to leave Paris while they wait for American visas, moving to a village called Saint-Georges in the Loire Valley, Gustave doesn't want to leave despite the anti-Jewish graffiti and the Nazi's rapid advance in Europe.  And he especially doesn't want to leave his friend Marcel Landeau and his cousin Jean-Paul.

Life in Saint-Georges is dull for Gustave, compared to Paris, with one exception.  On their first Shabbat in Saint-Georges, Gustav is pushed into a fountain by a boy his age when he goes to buy the bread for that important meal, ruining the bread, his pride and any sense of safety Gustav may have felt there.
Meanwhile, the Nazis are rapaciously invading the country and country that spring of 1940 until they finally begin their invasion of France in June.  Gustave's parents decide to leave Saint-Georges and head for the Spanish border.

But even in his father's truck, traveling is slow and difficult, the roads are clogged with so many people heading to the border.  After traveling a few days and not making much progress, the crowd was attacked by Nazi planes machine gunning them.  Gustave's parents decide to return to Saint-Georges.  As luck would have it, when France was divided in occupied and unoccupied territory in the Armistice signed between France and Germany, Saint-Georges was right on the border of the unoccupied area, meaning that Gustave and his family could live in relative safety at least for the present.

In September life settles down, somewhat.  Gustave starts school and discovers that his Shabbat tormentor is in his class.  But he also meets and makes friends with Nicole.  At home, there is nothing much eat because the Nazis take what they want from shops, homes and gardens, leaving little for anyone else.  Gustave's father decides they will cross the border in his truck into occupied France and barter for some food, using the supplies he brought with him from Paris and his own Swiss ID papers.  This works out well for them and they continue to cross the border for the next year and whenever they can, they make sure there a black radishes in view.  They use they as a way to distract the German border guards, who like to eat them with their beer.

In the Fall of 1941, Gustave's mother finally hears from her sister in Paris, who tells them in coded language that things are getting bad for Jews there, that Gustave's friend Marcel and his mother are missing and they want to get away.   Meanwhile, Nicole invites Gustave along for a bike ride to see the famous Chateau de Chenonceau, where her father works.  It is a strange day out for Gustave, but it is the beginning of the part he will play in the French Resistance, along with his father.
How will they ever get Jean-Paul and his family out of Nazi-occupied France and to safety?

Meyer's realistic novel is an interesting coming of age story set in a time when coming of age happened quickly and young.  The reader sees Gustave transformed from a boy who needs to carry his toy Monkey around in his pocket to see safe to a boy who takes dangerous action to do what is right.  I liked that Black Radishes is set in the unoccupied part of France.  So often, stories a set in the occupied part where there was so much more danger, but it is good to see that life wasn't easy in unoccupied France.  Yet, Meyers depicts a very measured amount of violence and anti-Semitism as well as the fear, tension, cold and hunger that people suffered every single day in both parts of France throughout the novel making it an excellent choice for introducing Holocaust topics to young readers.  Word is that Susan Lynn Meyer is writing a companion book which continues Gustave's adventures.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL

Black Radishes has been give the following well deserved honors:

2011 Sydney Taylor Honor Award
2011 Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book
2011 Boston Author's Club Highly Recommended Book
2011 Massachusetts Book Award Must Read Finalist
2011 Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Young Adult Top 40 Book
2013 Shortlisted for the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Award

The Chateau de Chenonceau that plays an important part in Black Radishes

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1940 - Twins Jimmy and Patrick Sweeney, 6, have the idea of selling the frogs they have caught to the other kids in their East End, London neighborhood, but as the war continues, evacuation to the country with 3 other of their 11 siblings puts end to their frog enterprise.  Unfortunately, when they reach the village they are evacuated to, Jimmy and Patrick are taken by separate families, as are siblings Jeanie, Irene and Bobby.  It is Mrs. Cribbins who takes Jimmy and she doesn't seem very nice right from the start.

2012 -  Nathan Pepper, 12, isn't too happy about moving from London to a small village in the country because of his dad's new job, especially since it doesn't seem to have a skateboard park anywhere.  And it doesn't help that the first night in his new house, Nathan wakes up suddenly, hearing a strange noise.  Creeped out, he nevertheless decides to see what it is.  Going up the stairs to another bedroom, Nathan can hear distinct crying but even stranger, when he opens the door, the bedroom is completely changed - no longer neat, clean and shiny, now it was a dirty, dusty attic with a little boy under a thin blanket sobbing for his mum.

Jimmy's life with the Cribbins family is much worse than expected.  He sleeps in a lonely, dark attic, he does most of the chores in the house, and than he is sent outside, not allowed back in the house til evening.  And he isn't fed much either, so now he was starving.  Nathan brings him some cake, but when Mrs. Cribbins finds somes crumbs in Jimmy's bed, he is accused of stealing their food and is given no breakfast.

Totally baffled, Nathan continues to go upstairs at night to find Jimmy again, but to no avail.

Meantime, in 2012, Nathan starts at his new school and things begin to look up for him as he makes friends and finds fellow skateboarders; and in 1940, Jimmy begins school, too, but only after doing his chores.  And, though the two Cribbins children ride the bus, Jimmy is made to walk the long distance to school. He no sooner arrives and he is picked on by a group of boys resentful of evacuees.  While two hold him down, another boy, Frank, takes an industrial staple gun from behind the school and staples Jimmy's back.  The only good part of that day is that Jimmy discovers that his twin, Patrick, is at the school, too.

That night, Nathan is able to visit Jimmy again in the upstairs bedroom and once more, he brings the starving, now injured little boy some food.

But can Nathan help Jimmy across the years?  In the autumn, he is able to visit Jimmy fairly often, bringing him food and company, but as winter begins, it becomes more difficult.  Nathan's concern for Jimmy is really peaked when he sees a picture of the twins boys in a newspaper article about the village's evacuees.  And later, in another article, he learns that Jimmy has died from malnutrition.  To make matters worse, Nathan's Aunty Miranda comes to stay indefinitely in the upstairs bedroom, and he fears he won't be able to see and help Jimmy before it is too late.  So, Nathan decides that desperate times call for desperate measures and he hatches a really stinky plan to drive his Aunty M out of that room and into another.  But, can a stinky plan succeed?

Shalini Boland based A Shirtful of Frogs on the real experiences of her father-in-law, Paul Boland, who was evacuated with his twin Peter at the age of 5.  And in writing his story, she has brought attention to this important, yet disturbing and sad aspect of evacuation.   Most of us probably think that the people who took in the WWII evacuees from London were such kind, caring, concerned people, sometimes strict but not abusive. But actually that wasn't always the case.  Kids like Paul Boland/Jimmy Sweeney were abused, starved and used as free servants while the people they lived with collected the government money meant for their care, and used it for their own family's benefit.

Boland says she created Nathan to give Jimmy a needed friend in this well-written time-slip story, but of course, that doesn't happen in real life.  A Shirtful of Frogs is, in effect, a wonderful tribute to Boland's father-in-law and all the children who suffered the way Paul/Jimmy did when their parents trustingly sent them off to live with strangers in what they believed would be relative safety.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was sent to me by the author

Click here to enter a Goodreads Giveaway in progress until October 31, 2012 for a signed copy of A Shirtful of Frogs open to US, CA and GB residents.

This trailer for A Shirtful of Frogs is interesting both for the book's promotion and for its use of public domain actual footage:

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