The Impossible Journey (St. Petersburg) [Kindle Edition]

Gloria Whelan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8-A story of a remarkable 13-year-old girl in an extraordinary situation. In Leningrad, in 1934, Marya sets out to find her parents, former aristocrats and therefore considered enemies of the state, who have been sent to Siberia as political prisoners. The spirited and resourceful girl learns that her mother is in Dudinka, a thousand miles from the closest railway station. Marya obtains a few rubles selling her paintings (like Kobe in Homeless Bird [HarperCollins, 2000], Marya's creativity helps sustain her) and buys tickets for herself and her younger brother. At the railway station, the children begin their trek, finding their way by following a river. Some strangers help them; others conspire to report them to the authorities for placement in an orphanage. A tribe of reindeer-herding Samoyeds helps the children to their final stop, where they are reunited with their mother. Papa, who had been sent to a coal-mining camp in Siberia, eventually joins them, but is so ill that he dies at the first signs of spring. Life under Stalin as seen through the eyes of Marya is accessible, well researched, and culturally insightful. Lyrical prose conveys both a strong sense of place and the tremendous love that compels the protagonist to find her parents. Once again, Whelan successfully explores territory less traveled in books for young people.
Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 5-8. In a companion to Angel on the Square (2001), Whelan turns her attentions to Stalinist Russia, circa 1934. Following the murder of a local Communist party official, 13-year-old Marya's parents (the grown-up Katya and Mishka from the earlier novel) are arrested and sent into exile. Marya and her younger brother Georgi try to manage on their own at first, but eventually they set off on a long trek from Leningrad to Siberia, where they hope to locate their mother. Although the odds are great, with help from a kindly doctor, a fisherman's wife, and a band of nomadic Samoyeds, they succeed. Whelan centers her narrative on the children's journey, adding depth with a wealth of rich background details--about political prisons, the prevailing attitudes toward Communist dissidents, the changing lifestyles of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, and the absence of personal and religious freedoms, and much more. Give this to children who liked the previous book and to fiction fans who are interested in this historical period. A glossary of Russian terms is appended. Kay Weisman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 181 KB
• Publisher: HarperCollins (October 6, 2009)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001NRNIVW
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the best book!!!, July 7, 2003

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Impossible Journey (Hardcover)

The Imposible Journey is my Absolute favorite book. It is the story of a girl named Marya who lives in Russia during 1934. Her parents have been taken by Russia's communist government. Marya sells paintings she made to get money for the trip. Then she and her brother Georgi set off for the town in Siberia in which they know their mother is. On their "impossible journey" they encounter many things that could either slow them down or help them along the way.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An exciting adventure set during 1930s Soviet Russia., June 26, 2006

By 

komyathy (U.S.A. & elsewhere traveling) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Impossible Journey (Paperback)

This is the story of a young girl who drags her younger brother from St. Petersburg Russia to an outpost in Siberia in an attempt to reunite with their exiled mother; exiled by the secret police to this far-away place. First they journey by train, then by river, and finally by an even more unusual method. Their father, by the way, had been arrested by Soviet police officers and sent away as well, but his destination couldn't be determined by the children; whereas they were able to learn their mother's whereabouts. This book thus is a grand adventure story (written for young readers), but interesting on another level as well. For the book does provide a semblence of what life was like in the Soviet Russia, and provides a window into that society wherein people were arrested for no reason in the dead of night, seemingly at random, just to keep the citizens of the country passive & afraid. Moreover, the (limited) historical details presented herein are actually factual so those unfamilar with the events of this era will learn a few things. One character in the book helpfully explains a parable within this story of how a bear gets upstaged by a younger, quicker one. "When you make our leader look weak you put all of us in danger." Substitute these bears for the leader of Soviet Russia and the Communist Party chief at the time of the city of St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad) and you have the basis for this novel. A charismatic man by the name of Sergei Kirov was the city chief & the person who was apprehensive of this growing ever-more-popular person was dictator Josef Stalin. A character within the story herein classifies real-life Kirov as "our best hope," but it isn't to be as Kirov is gunned down in cold blood in 1934 (The world-famous Kirov Ballet company is named after this man, incidentially). Historians (in particular, Amy Knight & Robert Conquest) have persuasively shown how Stalin himself was behind this murder; to remove a potential rival in the making. Stalin then used this incident as an excuse to crack down on all potential Kirov sympathizers to consolidate his (Stalin's) own hold on power (since there weren't elections in Soviet Russia & a leader could only be forced out by those around him). "It's people like you," a politcal official thus tells an arrested citizen "who are responsible for Kirov's murder." And it was people like that who were arrested and sent off to God knows where---like the parents of the children of this story---traumatizing people far and wide across the Soviet Union so that leaders like Stalin who ran the country from Moscow could continue to do so as they liked. The Soviet Union/ USSR no longer exists, of course, but the legacy of Communist leaders such as Stalin still does linger over Russia even now as it tries to put the nightmare of Communism behind it. And this short entertaining book is a fine introduction to that era for young readers. (06Jun) Cheers!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book! But Not As Exciting As Angel on the Square, January 23, 2003

By 

"royaldiaryfan2000" (Aston, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Impossible Journey (Hardcover)

This was a great book--full of adventure and very exciting. The children of Katya and her cousin from the last book-Angel on the Square-witness their parents being taken away by the new police instated by the Communist government of Russia. Marya and Georgi, the children, are taken in by their greedy and rude neighbors, who take everything from Marya and Georgi's family's aprtment, and plan to send the two kids to an orphanage. However, they escape by buying train tickets with a Faberge locket their mother recieved when she lived with Anastasia in Tsarkoe Selo before the revolution and begin a journey to Siberia, by boat, through the wilderness, and by traveling and living among natives in northern Russia in order to find their mother by an address they found in a letter from their mother. The ending of the story is heart-warming, with the discovery of their mother and the return of their father in a house in Siberia owned by an old woman who takes them in. However, the reunion is disrupted by tragedy with the death of their father. This is a sad book--but it shows that you should never give up what you pursue, and that if you work hard enough--you will achieve it.