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The Length of a String by Elissa Brent Weissman

The Length of a String

Elissa Brent Weissman

Penguin Young Readers Group · Print & ebook · May 1, 2018

A Middle Grade pick for readers exploring The Length of a String.

Jewish Religious StoriesHolocaust StoriesAdoption Storiesjewish
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Who it’s for
An adoption search and a great-grandmother’s wartime diary open fresh questions of family and belonging.
Themes
Adoption and belonging, Intergenerational family history, Holocaust-era escape and refuge
Genres
Adoption Stories, Holocaust Stories, Jewish Religious Stories

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For older readers: When We Become Ours, D.j. Rosenblum Becomes the G.o.a.t., Split the Sky (coretta Scott King Author Honor Title)

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About this book

Imani is adopted, and she's ready to search for her birth parents. But when she discovers the diary her Jewish great-grandmother wrote chronicling her escape from Holocaust-era Europe, Imani begins to see family in a new way. Imani knows exactly what she wants as her big bat mitzvah gift: to find her birth parents.

Continue reading

She loves her family and her Jewish community in Baltimore, but she has always wondered where she came from, especially since she's black and almost everyone she knows is white. Then her mom's grandmother--Imani's great-grandma Anna--passes away, and Imani discovers an old journal among her books. It's Anna's diary from 1941, the year she was twelve and fled Nazi-occupied Luxembourg alone, sent by her parents to seek refuge in Brooklyn, New York. Anna's diary records her journey to America and her new life with an adoptive family of her own. And as Imani reads the diary, she begins to see her family, and her place in it, in a whole new way.

Family, Reconsidered

An adoption search and a great-grandmother’s wartime diary open fresh questions of family and belonging.

Come here for

  • Adoption, identity, and the meaning of family

Expect

  • Two generations connected through a diary and a changing sense of belonging

Where it sits

Holocaust Stories82%
Jewish Religious Stories76%
Adoption Stories51%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • US: African American Stories
  • Adoption Stories
  • Holocaust Stories
Authors
Elissa Brent Weissman
Publisher
Penguin Young Readers Group
Published
May 1, 2018
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Adoption and belonging · Intergenerational family history · Holocaust-era escape and refuge
Reading lane
US: African American Stories