The Berlin Boxing Club – Robert Sharenow

In a recent Edmodo poll I conducted with students at my school during orientation week, historical fiction came in DEAD LAST for preferred fiction reading genres. In order of favorite to least favorite, the rankings were: adventure/suspense, horror, dystopian, sports, romance, fantasy/sci-fi, paranormal, urban lit, and at the very bottom of the genre totem pole…historical fiction. I’ve found students who love historical fiction really love it – almost to the point of refusing to read other genres – but for the most part, I get blank, disinterested stares when I try to recommend books about past events or people. That said, the one sad era in history that never ceases to peak student interest is the Holocaust. There’s something about World War II and the Holocaust, in particular, that to this day draws in readers who otherwise want nothing to do with historical fiction – maybe it’s that the Holocaust, where one group of people did their best to completely annihilate another group of people, is at root both an adventure/suspense and horror story for the Jews who experienced it and those of us who read accounts of it today.

Part of what makes Robert Sharenow’s The Berlin Boxing Club stand out from other Holocaust titles is that Sharenow jumps in at the early part of Hitler’s rise to power, right as the Hitler Youth movement is taking root. Karl Stern is one of a handful of Jewish students at a Berlin prep school - but if you ask him, he’s a Jew by birth only. His family doesn’t actually practice Judaism as a religion or recognize any orthodox Jewish observances, and Karl himself could pass as part of the elite Aryan race Germany’s new leader Adolf Hitler is promoting – blonde, blue-eyed, light-skinned…the symbol of human perfection -  unlike those dark, vile, rat blood-filled Jews. Unfortunately, Karl falls prey to some school bullies who suspect him of being a Jew. They beat him and then pants him to see if he’s circumcised, and once Karl’s secret is out, he’s got a target on his back. Humiliated, Karl lies to his family and claims to have ‘fallen down some stairs,’ an obvious lie that his family ignores since they’ve got problems of their own. His mom battles depression, while his dad, an art gallery owner, is steadily losing business since Hitler has banned all art by the Expressionist painters Karl’s dad supports, threatening to jail anyone who shows or sells those paintings. Instead, Karl’s father makes what little money he can printing up flyers for some underground (ie. homosexual) clubs in Germany. 

It’s at one of his dad’s last art gallery showings that Karl meets Max Schmeling, a champion boxer and national German hero. Every German boy dreams of having the strength, wealth and fame of Schmeling, who beat famed American boxer, Joe Louis, in their first face-off. A cartoonist in his spare time, Karl's never cared much about physical sports, but when Schmeling calls him out on his busted face, saying he knows Karl was on the losing end of a fight not a flight of steps, Karl is ready to do what it takes to learn to fight and protect himself. Remembering Karl’s dad has a painting that a German expressionist painter did of him, Schmeling bargains with Karl’s dad – the painting in exchange for training Karl for free at his gym, the Berlin Boxing Club. After some begging on Karl’s part, his dad relents and the deal is made.

Karl takes his training seriously, getting up early each morning to do “the 300” – 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 50 pull-ups, and 50 minutes of running. Sure enough, after months of training, he finds himself growing stronger, and when Max returns from a tour of the States, he gives Karl the green light to start his boxer training at the gym. Dedicated and determined, Karl impresses the seasoned boxers at the gym with his speed and quick cuts, and before long he’s winning some amateur matches. But while Karl is getting better in the gym each day, things are only getting worse for the Jews remaining in Germany. Many flee the country after their businesses and homes are vandalized, and some families and Jews in the community start to disappear, including Karl’s outspoken, anti-Fascist Uncle Jakob, who they later learn was taken to a concentration camp specifically for Jewish traitors. When Karl’s family is evicted from their home and forced to live in the cramped quarters of his dad’s gallery basement, the Sterns realize the Germany they once knew is never going to be the same.

This book came highly recommended to me by no less than three students – all girls! – who read and loved it. The boxing storyline is secondary to the struggles of the Jewish Germans living in Nazi Germany, so while male readers might be drawn to it from both a sports as well as historical standpoint, don’t assume girls won’t like this one too. They do. I did.  

To learn more about Robert Sharenow and his book, in addition to the true story of Max Schmeling, you can visit his website at http://robertsharenow.com/ .

Never Fall Down – Patricia McCormick

Dealing with jammed laminators, adding apps and syncing  iPad carts, ordering books, conducting library orientation sessions, collaborating with teachers on new projects for the year, collaborating with NEW teachers on new projects for the year – let’s face it…the start of the school year is EXHAUSTING. It is so easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed out and zombie-fied from the back-to-school craziness that nothing brings some perspective crashing down quite like a book on the Cambodian Killing Fields – Patricia McCormick’s Never Fall Down. As much as I’d like to feel sorry for my overworked self, my woes ain’t nothing…

Arn is the eleven-year-old narrator of McCormick’s chilling book based on the true story of Killing Fields’ survivor, Arn Chorn Pond, who watched as the Khmer Rouge brutally murdered his entire family before sending him to work long hours in appalling conditions in a Cambodian rice paddy. When the book opens, Arn is a carefree boy living with his parents, older sisters and little brother in a village in 1970s Cambodia. One day, soldiers start coming through his village inquiring as to who is educated and who has money – and Arn notices that the people  who are more educated and have the better jobs leave with these soldiers never to return. Within a few weeks, the soldiers announce everyone will leave the village for three days to avoid some American soldiers coming through – only those three days turn into a years-long nightmare for Arn and his people.

Forced to walk for miles to a rice field where they’ll work 21 hour-long days, Arn recounts how older people and small children make the mistake of asking for water or saying they’re tired, only to be smashed in the head with the butt of a gun or stabbed with bayonets by the Khmer Rouge. Age and ability mean nothing. Four-year-olds work alongside thirty-year-olds work alongside seventy year-olds as they gather rice in the rain, many days working these long hours without anything but one bowl of soup for nourishment. Arn watches as his people drop dead from exhaustion, malaria, dysentery, and starvation as the dirt mounds nearby filled with dead bodies and reeking of rotting flesh continually grow larger. So how does Arn survive? By volunteering to play an instrument and entertain the Khmer Rouge soldiers with music. He also keeps his mouth shut, doing exactly as they order him to do, including dumping and burying the dead bodies of his family and friends.

Needless to say, this is a gut-wrenching read. Gut-wrenching as in some scenes you can literally feel your insides twisting and churning as the bile rises in your throat to know horrors like this went on - human beings actually did this to other human beings! – and that similar genocides are a part of our world today. Other than knowing the names/terms Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge and killing fields, I knew very little about this sad history of the Cambodian people. Just as Ruta Sepetys’ recent book, Between Shades of Gray, enlightened readers as to the atrocities that went on in Soviet labor camps during World War II, this book sheds light on a country that persecuted and killed many of its minority people while the rest of the world turned a blind eye. Like Between Shades of Gray's Lina, Arn fights to survive and refuses to let others forget what happened to his family and people - his voice keeps their memory alive. While these subjects may not be taught in U.S. classrooms, that doesn’t mean our students shouldn’t be made aware of the genocides that exist outside of the Jewish Holocaust.  A chapter or excerpts could be read from either Between Shades of Gray or Never Fall Down in class as a tie-in to other incidences of genocide throughout history and in modern times – the Old Testament through Darfur - with much discussion as to should other countries get involved...and to what extent. We may not want to know events like this happened, but we need to know they happened…and, worst of all, are still happening. To learn more about Patricia McCormick and her other books, you can visit her website at http://patriciamccormick.com/ .

Gilt (The Royal Circle #1) – Katherine Longshore

In British history, nobody brought the drama quite like the Tudors, and in all of history, no royal went through wives quite like Henry VIII. Many are familiar with wifey #2, Anne Boleyn, the ill-fated vixen and mother of future queen, Elizabeth I, but Henry later had another wife who met with the same headless end – that would be wifey #5, Catherine Howard. (As good a story as Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall was in season two of Showtime’s ‘The Tudors,’ season four featuring Catherine Howard’s story arc was the most haunting and my personal favorite.)

Gilt is told from the viewpoint of Catherine’s best friend, Kitty. The girls grow up as wards together in the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s house, where teenaged Cat acts as mistress of ceremonies entertaining the other girls and sneaking boys in for visits. Francis Dereham is one of the boys Cat takes special interest in – so much so that she brings him into the bed she shares with Kitty. Awwwkward for Kitty! The girls dream of escape, and nothing would be more glamorous than for them to one day serve in the royal court of the king. After some machinations on the part Cat’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, Cat gets her wish to go live at the court and serve as a lady-in-waiting for Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, but not before promising Kitty she will one day send for her to join her there.

Sure enough, once at court Cat works her feminine wiles on Henry - only thirty years her senior and no longer the svelte, hot ginge he was in years past. Cat makes the king feel young and desirable again, unlike the fuddy-dud he foolishly took as his fourth wife, so Henry quickly gets his marriage to Anne of Cleves annulled and takes Catherine as his *gulp* fifth wife. True to her word, Cat sends for Kitty and her other besties, Joan and Alice, to serve as her chamber maids.

Kitty always dreamed life in the royal court would be exciting; unfortunately, the kind of exciting Cat attracts is dangerous. A huge flirt, Cat takes up with the dashing Thomas Culpepper, who happens to be one of the king’s favorite courtiers and close associates, as he’s responsible for dressing the king. Kitty remembers Thomas from her days at the Duchess of Norfolk’s house, though, when she accidentally stumbled upon him raping a woman. Nice guy, eh? Worse, Cat keeps pushing one of Thomas’s closest friends, Edmund, on her. Edmund is a babe for sure, but he was with Thomas the day he raped the girl and did nothing to stop him...not that she did either, as Edmund pointedly reminds her when she confronts him on the matter. Kitty’s not even sure if Edmund really likes her…or likes the idea of the chase more. Then there’s the boy she really likes, William, who may only be a lowly secretary for the Duke of Norfolk, but sincerely seems to have Kitty’s best interests at heart. When word reaches the king that his young wife isn’t as virginal as she originally claimed and may even be an adulteress, a crime punishable by death, all hell breaks loose in the court as those closest to the king and queen scramble to get their stories straight and save their own necks.

You don’t have to be a history buff or fan of historical fiction to get caught up in this royal intrigue. The characters, including Kitty, are all based on actual people and events, and Longshore does her best to stay true to history with a few imaginative embellishments along the way. We know how things end for Catherine, but it’s Kitty who the reader ultimately sympathizes with and worries for her fate.

Longshore plans to write other novels centered around the court of Henry VIII, though not necessarily in sequential order. There’s certainly a goldmine of people and plotlines there to choose from! To learn more about the author and Gilt, visit Longshore’s website at http://katherinelongshore.com/ .