A Sky Full of Song

by Susan Lynn Meyer

Overview

This heartwarming, beautifully written middle-grade historicalnovel about an untold American frontier story is destined to be a cherished classic. 
 
North Dakota, 1905
 
After fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire, eleven-year-old Shoshana and her family, Jewish immigrants, start a new life on the prairie. Shoshana takes fierce joy in the wild beauty of the plains and the thrill of forging a new, American identity. But it’s not as simple for her older sister, Libke, who misses their Ukrainian village and doesn’t pick up English as quickly or make new friends as easily. Desperate to fit in, Shoshana finds herself hiding her Jewish identity in the face of prejudice, just as Libke insists they preserve it.
 
For the first time, Shoshana is at odds with her beloved sister, and has to look deep inside herself to realize that her family’s difference is their greatest strength. By listening to the music that’s lived in her heart all along, Shoshana finds new meaning in the Jewish expression all beginnings are difficult, as well as in the resilience and traditions her people have brought all the way to the North Dakota prairie. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781454947868
Publisher:	Union Square Kids
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	541,265
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Susan Lynn Meyer is the author of two previous middle-grade historical novels—Black Radishes, a Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner, and Skating with the Statue of Liberty—as well as three picture books. Her works have won the Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award and the New York State Charlotte Award, as well as many other honors. Her novels have been chosen as Junior Library Guild and PJ Our Way selections, included among Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, and translated into German and Chinese. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Wellesley College and lives outside Boston.
 

Editorial Reviews

2024 Sydney Taylor Book Award Middle Grade Honor Winner
Spur Awards 2024 Winner for Best Western Juvenile Fiction

“Frequent parallels to the Little House series accentuate how different Shoshana’s experience is from the White, Christian, mythically American lives of her classmates . . . . A moving, gently kind coming-to-America story. A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Meyer layers richly detailed depictions of Jewish traditions, stunning descriptions of the landscape, and a highly sympathetic narrator to convey an underreported historical arc.” —Publishers Weekly

“This character-driven storyline shines in descriptive passages . . . . A Sky Full of Song is a thoughtful piece of middle-grade historical fiction featuring a sympathetic protagonist from an underrepresented community.” —Shelf Awareness

“Solid historical fiction that fleshes out the diversity of the pioneer experience.” —School Library Journal

“The narrative easily interweaves the issues that Jewish immigrants dealt with in the early 20th century . . . . How Shoshana resolves her feelings . . . makes the ending satisfying without being cloying.” —The Arts Fuse

“A different kind of prairie story has arisen, one that seeks in some manner to correct the past.” —The Wall Street Journal

“[A] beautifully written novel that also touches on the forced removal of Native Americans.” —Book Riot

“Gorgeous, immersive prose captures the closeness of the family’s village, the ever-present threats of violence, and the vastness of the Great Plains. The tension between those who want to preserve their customs and those who want to assimilate as soon as possible is a common theme in Jewish immigration stories, one that Meyer makes fresh and tangible through her focus on a little-known experience and her weaving of music into the story.”  —Historical Novel Review

From the Publisher

02/20/2023

In 1905, after her mother is injured in yet another attack on Jews by the tsar’s soldiers, 11-year-old Shoshana, her three sisters, and their mother hasten their plans to travel from Liubashevka, their village in Ukraine, to America. They’ll join Shoshana’s brother and father in North Dakota, where they’ve spent the past three years starting a farm, having themselves fled to avoid her brother’s conscription into the tsar’s army. Though Shoshana aches for her community and the silvery white birches of her homeland, her first experience of a prairie sunset pulls her to the unfamiliar terrain. As she learns about the U.S. government’s displacement of the Dakota people, Shoshana compares the act to the Russian Empire’s treatment of Jews, becoming keenly aware that this displacement made her family’s resettlement possible. The ignorance, mockery, and cruelty Shoshana and her family endure, including antisemitic slurs and physical assault, create painful conflicts between Shoshana’s pride in her identity and her desire to fit in. Meyer (Skating with the Statue of Liberty) layers richly detailed depictions of Jewish traditions, stunning descriptions of the landscape, and a highly sympathetic narrator to convey an underreported historical arc. Protagonists present as white. Back matter contextualizes the well-researched book’s history. Ages 8–12. Agent: Rena Rossner, Deborah Harris Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2023-01-25
In 1905, a family fleeing pogroms comes to rural North Dakota.

Shoshana loves Liubashevka, her village in what’s now Ukraine, though she misses her barely remembered father and older brother, off in “Nordakota.” Liubashevka is getting dangerous for Jews, though: Cossacks gave Mama a head injury, and if Papa and 17-year-old Anshel were here, they’d be conscripted into the tsar’s army. So they journey to America, Shoshana sneakily acquiring a kitten en route. With Shoshana, older sister Libke, and the 3-year-old twins, Papa’s prairie dugout is crowded, but it’s good to have the family together again. Still, Shoshana feels the constant pressure of being different: Her Yiddish-speaking family isn’t allowed credit at the general store, and the bullying boys at the one-room schoolhouse call her hateful slurs. Wouldn’t it just be easier to celebrate Christmas? Wouldn’t the boys be nice if she just wasn’t Jewish anymore? Frequent parallels to the Little House series accentuate how different Shoshana’s experience is from the White, Christian, mythically American lives of her classmates. A friendly interaction with a Dakota girl allows Shoshana to feel anger for the displaced Dakota (though she doesn’t ponder the relationship between that displacement and her own family’s safe refuge). A moving, gently kind coming-to-America story.

A lesser-known Jewish American history offers a plainspoken message about assimilation and self-love. (author’s note, references) (Historical fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews