Amazon.com Review
It is the year 2407, when everyone wears a mask to emphasize conformity, and tranquility has been implemented via genetics, drugs, and therapy. It is also the year 1348, the time of the Black Death in Strasbourg, France, and 16-year-old Gemm has been sent back from the future to cure his nonconformist desire to create music. In the past he is known as Johannes, the son of a wealthy moneylender in a small Jewish community that finds comfort and strength in the daily rituals of Judaic faith. But as the plague sweeps the land, terrified people in city after city scapegoat the Jews as the cause of their problems. Officials find it convenient to have someone to blame, and realize that they can wipe out their debts by torturing and burning the moneylenders and their families--but they play music all the while to make the horrible scene less dismal.
Sonia Levitin, whose exceptional young adult novels are often based in Jewish culture and identity (Escape from Egypt and The Singing Mountain, among others), draws on historical fact for this story's powerful emotional impact. The vivid details of ghetto life in the Middle Ages--the Sabbath peace, the enforced humiliations of moneylenders, Johannes' joy at his betrothal to his love Margarite--make the final holocaust scene overwhelmingly real, with layers of meaning that apply to our own times. The futuristic framing device adds additional flavor, evocative of Lois Lowry's The Giver. This is a book that both fantasy fans and pragmatic young readers will devour, and one that's rich with thoughtful ideas about racism, conformity, and the lessons of history. (Ages 10 and older) --Patty Campbell
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Levitin (The Singing Mountain) handily combines futuristic science fiction and late-medieval Jewish history in a story reminiscent of Lois Lowry's The Giver. In the year 2407, societal tranquillity is maintained by ample servings of serotonin drinks to the genetically engineered population and by careful monitoring to suppress all expressions of individuality or creativity. When the boy Gemm 16884 somehow feels moved to make music, an extinguished art, he is given a choice between being "recycled" (killed) or sent into virtual reality to experience the bad old days as a cure for his deviant desires. Opting for the latter, he finds himself living as Johannes, the 16-year-old son of a Jewish moneylender in 1348 Strasbourg. In steadily more harrowing chapters, Levitin shows a thickening climate of anti-Semitism. As the bubonic plague spreads from the ports of Sicily across Europe, the Jews are accused of poisoning the water supply; whole communities of Jews are massacred. Will Gemm's experience as Johannes deaden his craving for art? That everything about the plot seems inevitable, from Johannes's dreadful martyrdom to Gemm's last-page embrace of humanism, only magnifies the tension: much of the horror of Johannes's plight, for example, comes from the audience's superior awareness of Johannes's certain doom. The author pulls off a nifty featAshe makes a low point in human history the prelude to a crescendo of idealism. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
