Customer Reviews

Ashes

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thirteen-year-old Gabriella Schramm lives a comfortable and happy life with her middle class family in Berlin, Germany in 1932. Her father is a scientist who studies and teaches physics at the university. Because of his work, Albert Einstein is a friend of the family. Gaby enjoys reading books, going on after school outings to the zoo and the movies with her best friend, Rosa, and spending summers at her family's vacation home by the lake. Her biggest worry up until now has been the teacher who confiscates the books he catches Gaby reading during class. But all that is about to change, as Adolf Hitler grows in popularity and power.

First, Hitler's private army, in their brown uniforms, begins to fill the streets of Berlin. Then the persecution of Jews and communists begins. Intellectuals and scientists like Gaby's father are a target, too, for teaching un-German ideas and for not supporting the Nazis. Gaby is increasingly worried that her older sister Ulla's boyfriend may be a Nazi. And even the books Gaby enjoys escaping into in these troubled times are becoming a target. As her entire world changes and seems to crumble around her, Gaby must come to terms with all that she has lost.

Ashes is a fascinating and often troubling look at life in Germany during Hitler's rise to power. Gaby was a very likeable heroine. I especially enjoyed that she loved reading and that books were her escape into another world, which reminded me of myself at her age. If you enjoy historical fiction and are interested in this time period then I highly recommend you read this book, and I also think it would make good supplemental reading for preteens and young teens learning about this era of history in school.

I enjoy historical fiction, but it almost seems unfair to classify this book: it rises above genre. It's a coming-of-age story, & it's a human story. Post-WWI Germany is just its tumultuous setting, although "just" is hardly an appropriate adjective. When we define something as a "setting," there seems to be the implication that it's distinctly less relevant than plot or characterization. But of course, none of us can really separate the setting of our lives from the plot, & it is often as much our setting as anything that gives us character, makes us who we are. Lasky writes as if she understands this deeply.


Ashes is as fun to read as mind-candy & perhaps it is that that makes its beauty all the more stunning. Several times, I had to stop reading--just to breathe. It's not a breathless adventure novel; it's just that its...authenticity...takes you that much by surprise. In retrospect, I don't think I've ever read a truer book, on either side of the library.

If you've ever read anything else by Kathryn Lasky, assume nothing about this novel. I read The Night Journey to the kids the week before I read Ashes. Thirty years have passed between the publication of the two books, & it shows. Lasky's skill has developed so incredibly in those intervening years that she is almost unrecognizable from one book to another. Ashes reads as if it were a story she'd been wanting to tell her whole life & finally, she's pulled together the words & the images, & the result is a masterpiece, a life's work.

I have read a lot of Holocaust books and I read about 100 adolescent lit books a year. This one was ok but it took too long to get into, in my opinion, and left the reader wondering what happens at the most crucial part (not a bad thing, but not my taste). It was an ok read, but I'm also glad I checked it out at the library and didn't purchase it.

My 7th and 8th grade students LOVE other books by this author, though.

I am a big fan of this author, so I picked this up all ready to be excited about the story and to benefit from Ms. Lasky's great talent. Unfortunately, this novel never really grabbed me. I am not this book's target audience, which I would guess to be middle schoolers. The writing to me felt rather flat. I can't fault the author on her history, however I think it's the story that suffered here. It takes place during such a turbulent time, and Gabrielle is 13 years old - also a turbulent time. Those two things together should have produced incredible drama and emotion, however they weren't conveyed here. The plot felt very contrived and the pacing very strange. This girl lives next door to Albert Einstein, gets to wear a scarf belonging to Josephine Baker and ends up at the theatre with Goebbels??

I feel that this would still have worked well as an upper elementary introduction to this time period had not the story of Gabrielle's sister Ulla been included. Ulla falls in love with a Nazi and gets pregnant. There's much discussion between Gabrielle and her friend Rosa about "doing it" and even a visit to a cabaret to witness political humour, nude backdrops, and daring costumes.

I think the only time the book succeeds are the chapters describing Hitler's election. Here is the raw emotion, the confusion and fear that seemed to be missing earlier. This occurs two thirds of the way in however and I found myself really having a hard time sticking with this book up to that point. I can't imagine this being a popular choice with teens. This story is told so much better in the book The Boy Who Dared. This one is just OK for me.

Gabrielle Schramm lives in the kind of family that encourages intellectual curiosity and exploration. Her father is a scientist who works with Albert Einstein and loves to probe the mysteries of the universe. As for Gaby, she loves to read --- often more than one book at a time --- so much that she sometimes gets in trouble for reading novels or poetry when she should be studying. But Gaby has little clue at the start of her story just how contentious reading --- and books --- will become over the next several months of her life.

It's 1932, and Gaby is starting to realize that things are changing in Berlin. She doesn't understand everything that's going on, but she knows that Hitler's Brown Shirts (the private army forces known as the Sturmabteilung, or SA) often take over movie theaters and clubs, that comments belittling the work of Einstein and other "Jewish physicists" are becoming more popular, and that she herself, with her pale blond braids, has been receiving more comments about her appealing (i.e., Aryan) looks.

When Gaby's older sister becomes romantically involved with a young Nazi sympathizer, and when Einstein starts talking about emigrating to America, Gabrielle begins to understand the extent of the changes the rising Nazi party will have on her life. But when the Nazis start burning books --- some of the very books Gabrielle treasures --- the real horror of the nascent Nazi regime finally sinks in. Can the Schramms continue to explore their intellectual pursuits in this new society?

In ASHES, Kathryn Lasky thoughtfully interweaves Gabrielle's growing understanding of the adult world --- especially surrounding issues of sexuality --- with her increasing awareness of other adult concerns: politics, betrayal, divided loyalties and threats to freedom. Gaby is a sophisticated but believable narrator who uses a "Diary of Shame" to chronicle the events she witnesses that compromise her own sense of morality. She writes, "I feel as though I am seeing things I shouldn't see. I feel that somehow I have stumbled into the wrong place, the wrong world. I am a peeper, a voyeur...."

As she observes the rapidly changing world around her, she gains a new sense of the moral intricacies of her society, even as she uses her father's (and Einstein's) insights to maintain perspective: "How much simpler the rest of the universe felt compared to this small part here on Earth. I picked up my binoculars and turned them toward the night sky that was puddled with light, adrift with shoals of stars. What were we, I thought, but a speck in an insignificant galaxy, among countless galaxies with millions perhaps billions of stars."

ASHES, which includes real-life historical figures (and several others inspired by history) among its cast of characters and opens each chapter with an excerpt from one of Gaby's beloved books, is a moving exploration of some pretty profound questions. The narrator's own enthusiasm for learning undoubtedly will inspire readers to explore history, literature, the universe and their relationship to their own worlds and experiences.

Kathryn Lasky's ASHES provides a powerful saga of 1932 Berlin, where teen Gabriella lives a charmed life with loving parents and a nice school - until Hitler begins his rise to power and her freedoms become challenged. Soon Gaby is losing trust in everyone - and even her beloved books are vanishing.

I like this book a lot except it's really sad in the end. I think it is a little easy though.....

This book is YA historical fiction set during WWII. It details Hitler's rise to power and the hatred towards Jews. The book also deals a bit with the book burning that was done in Germany during this time period. Gaby is a young German girl trying to understand how someone like Hitler could gain power. This is a good, quick read. It was on the book list for my YA literature class.

[...]

I thought this might be an interesting point of view from a German girl as the world headed toward WWII. What I found was the point of view of an indulged girl who essentially was bemoaning the loss of her immensely comfortable world for one only slightly less so. While it is natural for a child to be so egocentric and see everything through the lens of how it affected her, the author certainly doesn't have that excuse. It boggles the mind to have the worst thing that happened to Gaby was her losing three books and cutting her hair off, by choice. She left her school by choice, she wasn't banned. Her sister became pregnant by her boyfriend, she wasn't raped, worked to death or forced into prostitution. There were no edicts banning Gaby and her family from going anywhere or doing or having anything, there were no yellow stars, there were no roundups for her family, there was no forcible head shaving. Instead, there were one or two nasty remarks and someone refusing to drive their still intact family, except for her sister who chose to stay behind, to their vacation home. Oh the horror!

I gave the book two stars as it did indicate, contrary to what people seem to believe now, that Hitler was around for many years prior to being the leader of Germany, being elected to political power, and being very clear from the beginning in his anti-Semitic views. it also shows clearly that obviously much the German nation was very much in support of those views and of the atrocities, and by no means a "victim" of one little man who "perpetrated everything all by himself."

I can't imagine what impression this book would leave on a child.