About this item
Sydney Taylor Honor Award Winner Black Radishes is a suspenseful WWII/Holocaust story, in which one boy learns what it means to be Jewish and French at a time when everything is changing. It is March of 1940. The French believe that their army can protect them from Nazi Germany. But is Paris a safe place for Jews? Gustave's parents don't think so. Forced to leave behind his best friend, the mischievous Marcel, and his cousin Jean-Paul, Gustave moves with his mother and father to Saint-Georges, a small village in the countryside. During April and May, Nazi Germany invades one country after another. In June, the French army is defeated, and Paris is occupied. Saint-Georges is still part of the free zone, but the situation there is becoming increasingly precarious.Then Gustave meets Nicole, a Catholic girl who works for the French Resistance. Along with her father, Nicole tries to find a way to smuggle Jean-Paul, Marcel, and their families into Free France so that they can all escape to America. It is Gustave, however, who comes up with a plan that just might work. But going into Occupied France is a risky thing to do when you are Jewish. Inspired by her father's experiences as a Jewish child living in France during World War II, Susan Lynn Meyer tells the story of a family's day-to-day struggles in a country that may not be able to keep its promise of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
About the Author
Susan Lynn Meyer was born in Baltimore and now is a professor of English at Wellesley College. BLACK RADISHES, her first novel, was inspired by her father's childhood as a Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied France. It was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, was named a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year, and was awarded a Sydney Taylor silver medal, as well as other honors. Susan Lynn Meyer's NEW SHOES, a picture book about an African-American girl in the pre-Civil Rights South, illustrated by Eric Velasquez, will be published by Holiday House in 2014.
