{"id":1719,"date":"2019-02-28T10:33:36","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T15:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2019-02-12T15:36:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T20:36:23","slug":"review-once-by-morris-gleitzman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1719","title":{"rendered":"Review: Once by Morris Gleitzman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); First Edition edition, 2010
\nISBN-13: 978-0805090260<\/span><\/p>\n

Available: New and Used<\/span><\/p>\n

Once there was a boy who told stories, whose parents left him in an orphanage in the mountains and didn\u2019t say why. \u00a0He lived there for nearly four years, until one day he saw professional librarians arrive and burn all the books in the library. Except they weren\u2019t librarians, and they were burning all the Jewish books they could find, not just in the library there, but everywhere. The boy decided to find his parents, Jewish booksellers, and help them save their books.<\/p>\n

What he didn\u2019t know, and readers will know almost immediately, is that the book burners didn\u2019t just destroy Jewish books… they were Nazis, bent on killing off the Jews. The narrator\u2019s innocence on his journey to join his parents creates a sense of dread long before he encounters the first obvious results of violence, and his description of events that he doesn\u2019t understand is wrenching to the reader. While he makes sense of the world for himself and for others with imaginative storytelling, what\u2019s most terrifying is when he finally recognizes the situation and is unable to tell stories anymore, when other people need to believe them most.<\/p>\n

What is astonishing about this book is that for nearly a third of the story, the main character\u2019s most terrible imaginings are of the destruction of books and persecution of bookstore owners and customers. He is unable to conceive that there\u2019s anything that could be worse, in spite of the trucks packed with unhappy prisoners, soldiers, guns, and burning houses he encounters. Even when he finally recognizes the reality of what\u2019s happening, he clings to his own notebook of stories. His notebook, and his ability to tell stories changes lives and makes tragedy a little more bearable. In the end, the fate of the characters is unknown, although for most it appears to be inevitable. Stories can\u2019t save everyone. But there\u2019s always the possibility that a book, a story, the power of imagination, will save someone, and destroying them also leads to the destruction of hope.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Contains: violence, murder, brutality, book burning, death camps, killing of children, Holocaust setting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); First Edition edition, 2010 ISBN-13: 978-0805090260 Available: New and Used Once there was a boy who told stories, whose parents left him in an orphanage in the mountains and didn\u2019t say why. \u00a0He lived there for nearly four years, until one day he saw professional librarians arrive and burn all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-rJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1722,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}