A Sky Full of Song

by Susan Lynn Meyer (Author)

A Sky Full of Song
Reading Level: 4th − 5th Grade

This heartwarming, beautifully written middle-grade historical novel about an untold American frontier story is destined to be a cherished classic.

North Dakota, 1905

After fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire, eleven-year-old Shoshana and her family, Jewish immigrants, start a new life on the prairie. Shoshana takes fierce joy in the wild beauty of the plains and the thrill of forging a new, American identity. But it's not as simple for her older sister, Libke, who misses their Ukrainian village and doesn't pick up English as quickly or make new friends as easily.

Desperate to fit in, Shoshana finds herself hiding her Jewish identity in the face of prejudice, just as Libke insists they preserve it. For the first time, Shoshana is at odds with her beloved sister, and has to look deep inside herself to realize that her family's difference is their greatest strength.

By listening to the music that's lived in her heart all along, Shoshana finds new meaning in the Jewish expression all beginnings are difficult, as well as in the resilience and traditions her people have brought all the way to the North Dakota prairie.

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$16.99

Kirkus

 A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love.

Publishers Weekly

In 1905, after her mother is injured in yet another attack on Jews by the tsar’s soldiers, 11-year-old Shoshana, her three sisters, and their mother hasten their plans to travel from Liubashevka, their village in Ukraine, to America. They’ll join Shoshana’s brother and father in North Dakota, where they’ve spent the past three years starting a farm, having themselves fled to avoid her brother’s conscription into the tsar’s army. Though Shoshana aches for her community and the silvery white birches of her homeland, her first experience of a prairie sunset pulls her to the unfamiliar terrain. As she learns about the U.S. government’s displacement of the Dakota people, Shoshana compares the act to the Russian Empire’s treatment of Jews, becoming keenly aware that this displacement made her family’s resettlement possible. The ignorance, mockery, and cruelty Shoshana and her family endure, including antisemitic slurs and physical assault, create painful conflicts between Shoshana’s pride in her identity and her desire to fit in. Meyer (Skating with the Statue of Liberty) layers richly detailed depictions of Jewish traditions, stunning descriptions of the landscape, and a highly sympathetic narrator to convey an underreported historical arc. Protagonists present as white. Back matter contextualizes the well-researched book’s history. Ages 8-12.

Copyright Publisher's Weekly 2023, LLC used with permission. 

Susan Lynn Meyer
Susan Lynn Meyer is the author of two previous middle-grade historical novels--Black Radishes, a Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner, and Skating with the Statue of Liberty--as well as three picture books. Her works have won the Jane Addams Peace Association Children's Book Award and the New York State Charlotte Award, as well as many other honors. Her novels have been chosen as Junior Library Guild and PJ Our Way selections, included among Bank Street College of Education's Best Children's Books of the Year, and translated into German and Chinese. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Wellesley College and lives outside Boston.
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9781454947844
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Union Square Kids
Publication date
April 11, 2023
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV016150 - Juvenile Fiction | Historical | United States - 20th Century
JUV013070 - Juvenile Fiction | Family | Siblings
JUV039280 - Juvenile Fiction | Social Themes | Religion & Faith
Library of Congress categories
History
United States
20th century
Schools
Jews
Music
Historical fiction
Farm life
JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Siblings
North Dakota
Novels
Bullies and bullying
Ukrainian Americans
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Religion &

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