Escape From Memory

Allowing herself to be hypnotized, fifteen-year-old Kira reveals memories of another time and place that may eventually cost her and her mother their lives.

Paul Wojdak’s father, Pawel, was born in 1912 in Novosibirsk, Siberia. During the 1800s, many Polish people were banished to Siberia for rising against czarist Russia’s repressive policies aimed to destroy Polish language and culture, and they eventually lived in Siberia for generations. By the 1920s, war and chaos followed the Russian Revolution, and Poles were cast as “enemies of the people,” fleeing east as refugees. Most died from disease, starvation, cold, or violence, including Pawel’s parents, and many Polish children were tragically trapped in Siberia—a seven-year-old Pawel among them. Later in life, living in Canada with his wife and son, Pawel physically could not speak about his childhood and refused to speak about his life as a young adult, but his memories were sometimes triggered by chance events, leaving mysterious tidbits for his son, Paul. Why could his father sing the Japanese national anthem? How did he come to see a tractor as a young boy in the United States? Inspired by his love for his father combined with a desire to understand Pawel’s complicated life, after his father’s death, Paul takes on the daunting task of trying to piece together his father’s past, determined to uncover the truth in the hopes of learning the story of a man who, despite all his hardships, was respectful, loyal, dedicated, and loving. Only knowing bits and pieces of his father’s childhood and knowing his father fought in World War II, Paul begins by connecting his father’s story with the stories of other Polish children and men in Siberia and Eastern Europe from 1917 to 1945. From there, he brings to light the remarkable story of the Polish Rescue Committee and their plight to rescue Polish children in Siberia after World War I and of the compassion of the Japanese people in harbouring these children. Following records of his father’s trail, he shares the incredible journey these children then took before finally arriving in Poland in late 1922, only to find their lives in upheaval again in 1939, when Poland was invaded by Russia and Germany. Escape from Siberia, Escape from Memory not only shares an extraordinary story of heroism and survival, but also explores the struggle to recapture and preserve cultural and personal memory and the impact of war on children and young adults.

Finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor. On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her f loorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * TIME * CHICAGO TRIBUNE * THE GUARDIAN * ESQUIRE * THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS * FINANCIAL TIMES * LIBRARY JOURNAL * THE A.V. CLUB * KIRKUS REVIEWS * LITERARY HUB American Book Award winner

As late as 1961, nearly seven thousand children were in the custody of Victorian institutions or under the care of the Children's Welfare Department. Frank Golding and his two brothers were among this number. On Christmas Eve 1940, the boys - Frank (not yet three), Bob (four), and Bill (six) - found themselves on the doorstep of an orphan asylum. They were certainly not orphans, but the boys spend most of their lost childhood inside the walls of the Ballarat Orphanage. It would take Frank fifty years to learn what had been happening 'outside the wall' while he was inside, and what had happened to his parents, why didn't they come for him, why wouldn'd anyone tell him.....Frank's childhood puzzlement lasted half a lifetime. Frank finally found out that his parents deeply cared for the boys, but the battle for their children had been at a huge cost.

Shanghai, China is a strange place for a young Jewish girl from ViennaÉ But that is where Lily Toufar finds herself in 1938. She and her family have left their home to find safety far away from Europe, where Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party are making life unbearable for Jews. TheyÕve had to travel fast Ð Lily even had to leave behind most of her toys and books Ð but here she feels free from danger. Despite their hopes, it quickly turns out that all is not safe in Shanghai. Now that the area is controlled by Japan, whose leaders support Hitler, the local government orders Jewish refugees, including Lily and her family, to move into a ghetto in an area of the city called Hongkew. Once again Lily wonders what will happen next. Life changes for Lily and her family when they are forced to the over-crowded ghetto. There is little food to eat, and many people become sick. Lily remains hopeful, but when rumors begin to circulate that Jews may be in as much danger here as they were in Europe, she wonders if she will ever feel truly safe and at home again. Based on a true story.

First published in 1935, On Escape represents Emmanuel Levinas's first attempt to break with the ontological obsession of the Western tradition. In it, Levinas not only affirms the necessity of an escape from being, but also gives a meaning and a direction to it. Beginning with an analysis of need not as lack or some external limit to a self-sufficient being, but as a positive relation to our being, Levinas moves through a series of brilliant phenomenological analyses of such phenomena as pleasure, shame, and nausea in order to show a fundamental insufficiency in the human condition. In his critical introduction and annotation, Jacques Rolland places On Escape in its historical and intellectual context, and also within the context of Levinas's entire oeuvre, explaining Levinas's complicated relation to Heidegger, and underscoring the way Levinas's analysis of "being riveted," of the need for escape, is a meditation on the body.

Into the Four-Story Mistake, an odd-looking house with a confused architectural history, move the Melendy family -- Mona, Rush, Randy, Oliver, Father, and Cuffy, the housekeeper. Though disappointed about leaving their old brownstone in New York City, and apprehensive about living the country life, the four Melendy kids soon settle into this unusual new home. Here, they become absorbed in the adventures of the country, adjusting themselves with all their accustomed resourcefulness and discovering the many hidden attractions that the Four-Story Mistake has to offer. The Four-Story Mistake is the second installment of Enright's Melendy Quartet, an engaging and warm series about the close-knit Melendy family and their surprising adventures.

Winner of the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Illustrated Books for Older Readers A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 A New York Times Best Children's Book of 2020 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2020 Booklist Best Books of 2020 Horn Book Fanfare 2020 Booklist Chicago Public Library Best of the Best 2020 Jewish Journal Twenty of the Best 2020 (Non-Holiday) Jewish Books for Kids A National Jewish Book Award 2020 Finalist for Middle Grade Fiction A 2021 Golden Dome Book Award Selection “Harrowing, engaging and utterly honest.” —Elizabeth Wein, The New York Times Book Review “A captivating chronicle of eight turbulent years.” —The Wall Street Journal From a beloved voice in children’s literature comes this landmark memoir of hope amid harrowing times and an engaging and unusual Holocaust story. With backlist sales of over 2.3 million copies, Uri Shulevitz, one of Farrar, Straus and Grioux’s most acclaimed picture-book creators, details the eight-year odyssey of how he and his Jewish family escaped the terrors of the Nazis by fleeing Warsaw for the Soviet Union in Chance. It was during those years, with threats at every turn, that the young Uri experienced his awakening as an artist, an experience that played a key role during this difficult time. By turns dreamlike and nightmarish, this heavily illustrated account of determination, courage, family loyalty, and the luck of coincidence is a true publishing event.