Product Description

"Maybe for us it's over. But not for the children. For them it will never be over."One summer after the Second World War, Etienne visits his beloved grand-father near the French town of Mont Brulant. A two-month vacation stretches before Etienne -- with hay to be turned, pears to be harvested, and old books to help repair. Best of all are the fields and woods around Mont Brulant, waiting to be explored on the back of Grand-père's horse.

But this year Mont Brulant isn't the same as Etienne remembers it. Why don't any young people live in the town now? he wonders. And why doesn't anyone else notice the refugee children begging along the road?

Then one day Etienne discovers children living in the woods -- children named Isaac and Sarah, and many others. Grand-père says he's imagining things. But why is Grand-père so worried about the markings that suddenly appear on Etienne's forearm?

As Etienne unravels the truth of what happened to the children of Mont Brulant, he and Grand-père must together confront an unspeakable tragedy. Steven Schnur's remarable tale of guilt and rememberance will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1277898 in Books
• Published on: 1994-10-18
• Released on: 1994-10-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8-Etienne, 11, looks forward to his summer at Grand-pere's farm near Mont Brulant. This year, though, things are different, for he sees ragged refugee children no one else notices and discovers artifacts in the woods where railroad tracks used to run. He meets Isaac, the children's teacher, and hears the whistle of a nonexistent train. Slowly, Etienne realizes he is reliving events that occurred years before, during World War II, when the Jewish children in the town were turned over to the Nazis. Schnur's novel is poignant and haunting. Etienne's direct, first-person narrative draws readers into his world, one of pleasure and puzzlement, action and reflection. The fantasy elements are smoothly integrated into the story, and add a unique slant to a frequently covered topic. A thought-provoking addition to the World War II literature.
Ann W. Moore, Schenectady County Public Library, NY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 4-7. Etienne has always spent idyllic summers on his grand-p{Š}ere's small farm near a French village in the years after World War II. But the summer Etienne turns 11, he loses his innocence after discovering a terrible secret. He learns that thousands of Jewish refugee children once found shelter there, but when the Nazis came, the villagers--including his grandfather--abandoned the children and let the Germans take them away. On one level, this is a suspenseful ghost story: who are the ragged children hiding in the woods? Why is Etienne the only one who sees them and hears their sobbing? On a deeper level, it's a story of haunting guilt. It's as if the boy is seeing his grand-p{Š}ere's guilty memories, including the clashing transport trains that took the children away forever. The prose is spare and beautiful, and the expressive charcoal illustrations move from the warm affection of the present to the shadowy horror that won't go away. Occasionally, the lesson is too heavily spelled out and the victims are too saintly, but there's no reconciliation. Grand-p{Š}ere is loving and wise, and he would do anything for Etienne, but during the terrible war, he was like most who had "sacrificed the stranger for their own safety." Readers will be moved to ask: what would I have done? Hazel Rochman

About the Author

In His Own Words...

"The summer I turned eight my family moved from the suburban town I had lived in all my life to a neighboring community six miles away. For my parents, who had spent their childhood fleeing Hitler, the change meant little more than an additional bedroom or two for their growing family of four sons. But for me, the sudden loss of neighborhood and friends seemed an upheaval as great as any they had endured during the 1930s. In an instant I became an outsider, a stranger, the new kid on the block. The shock awakened me from the cozy sleep of infancy and thrust me overnight into the great world of newspapers and radios and books, a world full of mystery and menace and wonder.

"It was a fascinating and fearsome time to wake up: John Kennedy, was about to be elected president, the threat of nuclear war hung in the air, and the first cautious explorations of outer space coincided with the first tentative revelations of the horrors of the Holocaust.

"With the Cold War providing the persistent background hum of impending annihilation, a hum that filled the ears of every child of the fifties, I began to learn the I Holocaust's terrible lessons of mail's limitless capacity for evil. The more I read about those awful years, the more I realized that events played out on the world stage had enormous impact on my own life. Though my immediate family had escaped Unscathed from the flames if Europe, many distant relatives had not. And had it not been for the war, I would have grown up not as an American in a suburb of New York City but, like my parents, as a German citizen of Berlin or Dresden.

"There was one other central constellation in the firmament of my youth: love. I was blessed to fall in love early in life and remain that way. Within days of meeting my future wife I knew we would one day marry. Eight years later, after high school, college, and postgraduate studies, we did. A long period of infertility followed, but the., with the swiftness of a miracle, three children were born: a daughter and boy/girl twins. Ever since I have thought of myself as a father first; everything else has become secondary.

"Writing for me has always been an expression of gratitude, an outgrowth of the impulse to give thanks for love received, for children born, for the miraculous existence of the imagination. When I write for adults I often do so in a state of wonder, transfixed by blessings. When I write for children I try to recapture the eight-year-old boy I once was, a boy filled with a passionate interest in the unfolding world around him. And finally I write in the hope of leaving behind a legacy of thought and feeling that my children might one day mine, if not for answers at least for solace, in the recognition that we traveled the same road of doubt and discovery."

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Customer Reviews

ends up being a very good book
I selected this book based on the artwork inside. The charcoal drawings are atmospheric and moody. The proportion of the adults give them a doll like quality. The drawings are mostly left unfinished to add mystery to them.

The book starts out slow, and somewhat choppy to read. The plot and characters are deliberately vague, and I struggled a little with the French names. It gets better as the book goes on and reveals its mysteries.

At one point I began to worry that it would turn into a typical ghost story. But the ghosts in this story are metaphors for real regret and wanting to change decisions made in the past.

There are moments in the book that may be disturbing for young readers. Books dealing with the holocaust always are. I would suggest this book for secondary students reading about the holocaust.

Never Forget
Etienne has been journeying up from the busy life in the city of France to the deep country on the base of Mont Brulant to spend the summers with his Grand-pere for as long as he can remember. He loves to spend time on the farm not only enjoying nature, but taking care of the sheep and chickens and harvesting the crops and pears. However, this time is different; this is the first time he is going alone, without his family. Etienne and his Grand-pere are enjoying their stay together until Etienne begins seeing starving children dressed in rags begging him for food. He seems to be the only one seeing them. Whenever Etienne mentions it to his Grand-pere, he becomes angry and tries to change the subject. There is something that his Grand-pere isn't telling him; he needs to find out. One day, Etienne takes a ride to the foot of Mont Brulant, and something very peculiar happens. As he ventures into a clearing of trees he sees a road that seems to lead to nowhere and various items belonging to children; a bracelet, a pen, a pocketknife. Etienne keeps on hearing and seeing the children that only seem to appear in the shadows. Are they real? Are they ghosts? Etienne knows that there is something wrong with the little town! What is it? Finally, Etienne forces out of his Grand-pere the history of the little village in the county. World War II had not been an ordinary war; it had not only been fought between soldiers, innocent people had been killed and persucuted. The children had been sent away to this town in hope that they might be able to hide. For a while, the people of the village hid them, but too many came. When the Nazis threatened to kill those hiding Jews, the people gave them away. They watched them herd them into cattle cars killing those who protested. The people tried to forget, but the souls of the children killed in the concentration camps haunted them. We must never forget. Never forget. The Shadow Children, by Steven Schnur, had a very powerful plot. It is filled with scary scenes of ghosts of dead children haunting the forests, and the dark past of the townspeople's history with the Holocaust. Altough the protagonist was a non-Jew, he still felt the pain and anguish as any relative of a victim in the Haloucast. The Shadow Children showed me how important it is to remember the Holocaust. In the Torah it says, "Remember what Amalek did to you!" The Nazis, the people who killed the millions of innocent children, are Amalek. We must remember! This novella is based on a true story; until the protagonist visited his grandfathers house in Germany, he had no idea what had happened to the Jews in World War II. I think that all children should read this book and see how important it is to remember. Again, Never FORGET!

The Summer of the Swans
The book, The Summer of the Swans, written by Betsy Byars is a very interesting book to experience.It instantly grabbed my attention, from beginning to end. I love this book, and if you read it, I'm sure you'll love this book too.

The Summer of the Swans takes place in West Virginia. This book is mostly about a boy named Charlie and his sister Sara. Charlie Godfrey is a ten year old boy that is mentally challenged. Sara Godfrey, on the other hand, is about thirteen years old, and she is a teenage drama queen. She is going through a time of life that she thinks she's the ugliest person in the world because she compares herself with her sister Wanda Godfrey. Wanda is described as a beautiful nineteen year old with a boyfriend named Frank. One day Charlie was going to sleep and he heard a sound outside. He went to the window and saw something white and he thought it was a swan. So he got up and went outside and saw the white figure moving away. Charlie decided to go down to the pond and see the swans. He walked down the side of the road and saw that the field he was passing looked like the one he had crossed with Sara earlier in the day to get to the pond. Charlie started walking in the field. Pretty soon he got to the woods. He started walking into the woods, but there was no clearing where he thought the pond was. Read this book to find more about Charlie and Sara's adventure.

The lesson of this book is, don't judge a book by its cover. In the story Sara judges a boy named Joe Melby because she thinks he stole Charlie's watch. But really he gave it back to Charlie. Sara comes to find out that Joe Melby is really a caring guy because he asked if he could help find Charlie. Sara said that she didn't need his help, but Joe Melby helped her find him anyway. This is why I think this book is a great book to read. Read this book to find out more about Sara's journey to find Charlie.