Milkweed (Random House Reader's Circle)
Jerry Spinelli
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 0375861475
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A stunning novel of the Holocaust from a Newbery Medalist
He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Filthy son of Abraham.
He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself, and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels.
He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi, with tall, shiny jackboots of his own-until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind.
And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.
Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable-Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II-and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young Holocaust orphan.
Death in a White Tie (Roderick Alleyn, Book 7)
Curse of the Ancients (Infinity Ring, Book 4)
Zia (Island of the Blue Dolphins, Book 2)
Palace of Spies (Palace of Spies, Book 1)
the jar fell and broke. I picked up the chunks, brushed off the dirt, ate one, and stuffed the rest into my pockets. I went straight to the Milgroms’. Uncle Shepsel gave his usual greeting: “Ah, the smelly one.” It was dark outside, but there was electricity this night. A single lightbulb dangled from a cord in the ceiling. Mrs. Milgrom was on the mattress. Mr. Milgrom was at the one table, seated in the only chair, doing things with his pills and bottles. There was a large purple welt on the
More than anything, he loved killing Jews with his hands. And not just any Jews. Jewish children. If you were an adult Jew, he would walk right past you, but he went out of his way for children. Sometimes he left the streets and waddled through the alleyways and rubble, smacking his club on his thigh, hunting. When he spotted someone to go after, he kissed the club. Fortunately, he was fat and slow. If he managed to catch you or trick you, he used the club to stun you. Then he jammed it into his
laughed. “Ha-ha! Jews? Oh no, we would never be Jews. Not us. Ha-ha!” She held out a piece of herring. “Want some fish?” The boy took the fish, and for the next hour the three of us sat around the kitchen table eating pickled herring and crackers and sugar cookies and milk. Drinking the milk, I thought 132 about Doctor Korczak and the cow. We told the little boy we were playing a game called Whisper so he wouldn’t talk or laugh too loud. When we went out the window with our sacks full, the boy
so that Janina would also stop, but it didn’t work. In fact, she went even further. She became a gnat in the nose of every Flop 166 she saw. She called them names. She threw stones. She sneaked up behind them and whacked them on the backs of their knees with a metal pipe. I smacked her. I shouted at her. But I could not change her. I could not understand her moods, her outbursts. I mostly accepted the world as I found it. She did not. She smacked me back and kicked me. In time I found my own
missed it. “So it became candy. That’s what happens when a potato stays in the ground too long. Did you know that?” “No,” I said. “My name is Misha Pilsudski. I’m a Gypsy from 32 the land of Russia. . . .” I held out my yellow stone. “My father gave me this before I was kidnapped.” And I told her all about myself and my family. She listened with her big eyes and her chin cupped in her hands. When I finished, she said, “It’s not nice to steal. What are you looking at?” “Your shoes,” I said. I