![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He knows he’s lucky but he’s also aware that things can get really bad really fast-a fact confirmed in his great-grandmother’s account of three girls tossed together in one tragedy and not all making it out alive. Matthew makes an excellent proxy for young readers, especially as a kid at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic: he’s feeling relatively safe but has no idea how long the shutdown will be or how dangerous the virus is. ![]() The shifting perspectives make for a choppy narrative at points, but the story more than compensates for the unevenness with compelling characters and three separate settings brilliantly utilized for both a sense of place and a connection between the major players. Alternate chapters tell the story of three girls in 1932: Mila, the daughter of a higher-up in the Ukrainian Communist Party Nadia, orphaned when her mother and family died in the Holodomor in Ukraine and Helen, the daughter of recent Eastern European immigrants to Brooklyn. When he finds an old photograph of two young girls, he uncovers a tale far more harrowing and dramatic than any video game. That’s taken away too, though, when his mom decides it’s time to go screen-free, suggesting he help his great-grandmother, who has recently moved in with them, sort through her old boxes. With school shut down and socialization limited, thirteen-year-old Matthew has been relying on his Nintendo Switch for entertainment during most of the spring in 2020. ![]()
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