Puppet - Hardcover

Wiseman, Eva

3.68

277 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887768288 ISBN 13: 9780887768286

Publisher: Tundra Books, 2009

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A heartbreaking episode in history, explained through the story of a young servant girl in the late 1800s.

The year is 1882. A young servant girl named Esther disappears from a small Hungarian village. Several Jewish men from the village of Tisza Eszvar face the ‘blood libel’ — the centuries-old calumny that Jews murder Christian children for their blood. A fourteen-year-old Jewish boy named Morris Scharf becomes the star witness of corrupt authorities who coerce him into testifying against his fellow Jews, including his own father, at the trial.

This powerful fictionalized account of one of the last blood libel trial in Europe is told through the eyes of Julie, a friend of the murdered Esther, and a servant at the jail where Morris is imprisoned. Julie is no stranger to suffering herself. An abused child, when her mother dies her alcoholic father separates her from her beloved baby sister. Julie and Morris, bound by the tragedy of the times, become unlikely allies. Although Puppet is a novel, it is based upon a real court case that took place in Hungary in 1883. In Hungary today, the name Morris Scharf has become synonymous with “traitor.”

Once again, Eva Wiseman illuminates a heartbreaking episode in history for young readers.

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About the Author:

Born in Hungary, Eva Wiseman came to Canada with her family when she was a girl. She began writing at a young age, and her first young adult novel, A Place Not Home, was a finalist for numerous literary awards across North America and was selected for the New York Public Library’s annual Best Books for the Teen Age list. Her second novel, My Canary Yellow Star, was also shortlisted for several awards, won the McNally Robinson Books for Young People Award, and was selected for the New York Public Library’s annual Best Books for the Teen Age list. Her novel No One Must Know was equally critically acclaimed and won the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award. Her novel Kanada was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and was the winner of the prestigious Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction. Eva Wiseman is the mother of two, and she lives in Winnipeg with her husband.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5–9—The theme of anti-Semitism is at the center of this novel set during the Hungarian blood libel trial in 1883. Poverty, despair, and grueling physical work make up the lives of the adults and children in the village of Tisza-Eszlar, where the Jewish and Christian communities are segregated yet intertwined in daily business. Julie, a Christian teen, works as a servant in the local jailhouse and is concerned about her friend Esther, a poorly treated maid. When she disappears, her crazed mother claims that the rabbi and the kosher butcher killed her daughter for her blood to make matzoh for the upcoming Passover holiday. The ills of religious superstition, prejudice, and false accusations are told from a first-person perspective through Julie. Witnesses are produced, including Morris Scharf, the young son of the accused rabbi. Morris, like a puppet, is manipulated and coerced into falsely making claims of watching the alleged crime, until Esther's drowned body is discovered in the village's river with no physical evidence of her death by a slaughterer's knife. Taking her cues from the actual trial transcripts, Wiseman develops a dialogue-driven account ranging from emotional hysteria to serene justice. And while the crux of this event revolves around the trial, Julie's personal struggle with her own abusive father detracts from the realistic drama unfolding for the real victims in the case. Still this is a plausible retelling of a little-known episode in the long history of anti-Semitism.—Rita Soltan, Youth Services Consultant, West Bloomfield, MI
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