Reviews for Broken song
Publishers Weekly
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Reuven Bloom, who aided Sashie and her family in their flight from Russia in The Night Journey, tells his own story of leaving Russia for Poland in 1897, in Broken Song by Kathryn Lasky, set during a time when the tsar's soldiers led pogroms against the Jews. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
This companion to Night Journey (1981) explores the plight of 15-year-old Reuven Bloom, a brilliant young Russian Jewish violinist whose music is "broken" by the horrors of late-19th-century pogroms. When his shtetl is attacked by marauding Cossacks and his family—save for his toddler sister—are slaughtered, Reuven desperately flees, shouldering little Rachel in a basket, until they reach family in Poland. A bitter Reuven joins an elite revolutionary group and becomes a demolitions expert. He makes the wrenching decision to let Rachel leave for America with relatives and stays behind to continue to exact vengeance. When the moment for revenge against his own family's murderer and thief of his expensive violin comes, though, Reuven has tired of killing and he merely wrests his beloved instrument back. By story's end, it is the early-20th century and Reuven arrives in New York and reunites with his family. The author offers readers, in a Dear America–style epilogue, follow-up information about Reuven's life. Lasky's writing is straightforward and unsentimental, sometimes a little pat, and her hero is a relatable and admirable protagonist. (historical note) (Fiction. 11-14) Copyright ŠKirkus Reviews, used with permission.
School Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Gr 5-9-Through rich prose filled with imagery, distinct characterization, and historical research, Lasky breathes life into the horrific history of anti-Semitism in Russia in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. At the start of the book, 15-year-old Reuven Bloom, a talented violinist, focuses on music and trying to balance his Talmudic studies, but the vicious activities of the Czar's army soon change his life. His best friend is kidnapped and taken to be a soldier. Soldiers murder his parents and older sister, and only Reuven and his baby sister survive. Circumstances make the teen courageous as he tries to escape the Cossacks and to find a cousin in Vilna who might help him and Rachel reach safety in the United States. She is taken to America when Reuven agrees to join the revolutionary movement and fight, and he joins her six years later. This reads like an adventure story, but the research at its foundation is clearly evident. Reuven was first introduced in Lasky's The Night Journey (Penguin, 1986), but this novel easily stands on its own. An excellent addition to any collection.-Renee Steinberg, formerly at Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Gr. 5-8. Like her award-winning The Night Journey 0 (1981), this draws on Lasky's Jewish grandparents' experience fleeing violent persecution in Eastern Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. Her focus is on Reuven Bloom, 15, a violin prodigy living in a shtetl 0 in the Pale of Russia. First Reuven's best friend is forced into the czar's army. Then his parents and older siblings are murdered by Cossacks, and he flees across the border with his baby sister in a basket on his back. For several years he works as spy and saboteur for the revolutionary Jewish Bund in Vilna, Poland, until, tired of politics and violence, he emigrates to "the Goldeneh Medina"0 (the golden country), America. The epilogue of dreams totally fulfilled is too idyllic, but the young man's brave struggle is a part of Jewish history, and it's all the more powerful here because it is told without reverence. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2005 Booklist
Horn Book
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
A gifted violinist, fifteen-year-old Reuven Bloom lives in the Pale, ""the only region in Russia where Jews were allowed to settle."" When Cossacks kill most of his family during a pogrom, Reuven escapes to Poland in disguise and carrying his baby sister on his back. Their dangerous trek is filled with incident and drama in this companion volume to The Night Journey. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
