To Cross a Line - Softcover

Ray, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140375872 ISBN 13: 9780140375879

Publisher: Puffin Books, 1995

Synopsis

In 1938, after a minor traffic accident, seventeen-year-old Egon Katz joins an increasing number of German Jews desperately trying to find a way out of the country

About this title

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. During the final weeks of 1938, Kristallnacht echoes in the recent memory of 17-year-old Egon Katz, a Jewish baker's apprentice. Delivering pastries one rainy afternoon, Egon crashes his rickety scooter into a high-ranking Nazi's car. Sentenced initially to pay a fine of 80 marks, Egon soon learns that the Gestapo are pursuing him. He packs a few belongings and turns to his extended family for help. In a story that becomes ever more suspenseful, Egon encounters barriers in his increasingly desperate efforts to leave Germany. His refined appearance denies him exit into Holland with a group of Jewish men disguised as coal miners. However, through his brother's help, Egon makes his way to the Danish border, where, again, he narrowly escapes the Gestapo. Ray uses Egon's memories as a device to tell a second story, that of Egon's family and his past. Skillfully layered through this thrilling, sparely written story of a teenager's struggle for survival are details of Jewish life and culture, as conducted in the face of Nazi persecution. As an account of an individual boy's experiences during the Holocaust's beginnings, the book effectively personalizes that time and place for young adult readers. In an afterword, Ray explains that her book fictionalizes her father-in-law's scooter accident and his subsequent escape from Hitler's Germany. Merri Monks

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up-Like many teenage boys, Egon Katz, 17, a Jewish baker's apprentice, is full of energy, big ideas, and love. But his home is Nazi Germany; it is one month after Kristallnacht; and life as he has known it is disintegrating. He comes to the attention of the authorities when he is involved in a scooter accident with a prominent businessman. Rather than report to Gestapo headquarters, Egon decides to flee the country. Ray's afterword explains that this is her father-in-law's story of escape. Knowing that these events happened to a real man who lived to tell about them lends power and credibility to the novel. But the author has not always been careful to separate what Egon knew then from her post-Holocaust knowledge, often making the narrative seem too modern and, in one case, historically misleading. Egon mentions "a crime of Dachau proportions," when the reality of the concentration camps would not have been known so soon after Kristallnacht. Still, the book is exciting and accessible to teens, regardless of their cultural background, and the relatively happy ending instills hope for the continuation of a people.
Sharon Grover, Arlington County Department of Libraries, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140375872
• ISBN 13: 9780140375879
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160