Soldier Doll

by Jennifer Gold

Overview

When fifteen-year-old Elizabeth finds an antique doll in a garage sale, she thinks it would be a good gift for her dad who's about to ship out for Afghanistan. She doesn’t realize that the doll might be a missing (and very valuable) historical artifact. With the help of Evan, the cute guy who works at the local used bookstore, Elizabeth discovers that the doll is THE soldier doll: the inspiration for a famous World War I poem. Elizabeth becomes the newest link in an epic history of more than a century of war, her story ingeniously interwoven with a cast of characters who we follow from World War I to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, a Czech concentration camp during World War II, Vietnam in 1970, and the aftermath of September 11th.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781927583302
Publisher:	Second Story Press
Publication date:	03/15/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Lexile:	HL600L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Jennifer Gold is an award-winning author of several books for young adults, including Soldier Doll and On the Spectrum. A lawyer and mom of two kids and two cats, she lives with her family in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

"Insightful and compassionate contemplation about war that wisely does not preach or take sides,
but allows each of the characters, in their unique historical settings, to speak for themselves."

Association of Jewish Libraries

"An excellent book that will draw young readers into stories of the past without even noticing they're learning about history."

Quill & Quire

"The captivating story is well-paced and flows naturally from present to past and back again many times over. The transitions serve to both build suspense and engage the reader. Gold has a keen mastery of plotting segues. Shifts from one setting to the next feel entirely appropriate and virtually cinematic. Superb writing and editing combine to create a readily readable, fascinating story. The characters, even those we only meet for a single chapter, are well-developed through the dialogue and action. The reader will feel empathy for the many and varied victims of war encountered through the story’s progression...Highly Recommended."

CM Magazine

2014-01-29
A small wooden doll links tales of wartime tragedy and tenderness across the 20th century and into the 21st. As told in flashbacks within a present-tense frame story, the doll is first given as a keepsake to a British Tommy by his sweetheart, Meg, in 1918. When he is killed at Ypres, a Jewish German soldier finds it, passing it decades later to a child in Terezín. Years after, the American son of a Prague war orphan carries it to Vietnam. He gives it to a village child, and she, to her Canadian son—who marches off to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, leaving it behind to be found in a Toronto yard sale in 2007 by Elizabeth, teenage daughter of an engineer about to depart for Afghanistan. In each era, the figurine's owners, family, friends and adversaries come across as distinct characters, with well-defined lives and motives. Along with penetrating insights into the feelings of those who went to fight, stayed behind or just became victims of circumstance, Gold supplies enough historical background to give readers an understanding of the complex events and rationales that drove each war. Some of the violence is joltingly explicit, and ultimately, Elizabeth has a devastating loss of her own to suffer, but her involvement with the doll leads to a final scene of both resolution and comfort. A memorable debut, both timely and universal in its themes. (Fiction. 11-14)

Kirkus Reviews