Image: Macmillan
Happy Monday! I hope you are enjoying this beautiful Monday! The heat wave broke here in NJ. It is dry, slightly breezy and just delightful. Middle Grade Monday features The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh. It's the early days of the Covid pandemic and eighth grader Matthew isn't happy about the lockdown. His journalist father is stuck in France as a result of travel restrictions. He doesn't exactly love doing schoolwork through Zoom, and his mom is all over his case about it. His feelings of loneliness and isolation are made worse by the fact that he can't hang out with friends, even outside and socially distanced, because his 100-year-old great-grandmother has moved in and catching Covid would be fatal for her.
Matthew is given the task of helping GG sort through her boxes of belongings and when he comes across a photograph of GG as a young girl in the 1930s, she becomes visibly upset and tells Matthew to leave. He's intrigued by both the photo and his great-grandmother's strong reaction and begins researching what went on in Ukraine during the 1930s after the country was annexed by the USSR.
This intense story about the Holodomor, the Soviet government-induced famine, shifts back and forth in time, from multiple points of view and unfolds masterfully. I had the honor of reviewing Ms. Marsh's 2018 book, Nowhere Boy for SLJ. Ms. Marsh connects current events with historical events seamlessly, trusting young readers to draw their own conclusions.
The Lost Year was a National Book Award Finalist and was named an SLJ as well as Kirkus Best Book of the Year. It also won a Golden Kite Award. Readers who love historical fiction, especially about little known events in history, will love The Lost Year.
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