The Database Of All The Reviews

The Feather-Bed Journey
Paula Kurzband Feder
Illustrated by Stacey Schuett
Picture Book
Ages 7 to 10
Albert Whitman and Co., 1995, 0-8075-2330-5
 One night Rachel and her brother have a fight over a pillow, a pillow that belongs to their grandmother. They pull the pillow apart and feathers fly everywhere. Grandmother is very upset and the two children are told that this pillow is very special. They ask their grandmother why it is special and she tells them her story. Both the reader, and Rachel and her brother, listen to grandmother's voice as she tells them about the pillow. It is a story about the persecution of the Jews in Poland by the Nazis. When Rachel's grandmother was a little girl her mother made her a feather bed. Soon after, World War Two began and her family was placed in a ghetto by the Nazis. There the feather bed kept six often hungry and frightened children warm at night. It was decided that grandmother would be taken out of the ghetto and hidden and this was done with the help of kind people on the outside. When the war was over grandmother found her mother again but the rest of her family was dead. Grandmother and her mother came to America to begin a new and better life. One day, on Hanukkah, a parcel arrived from Poland. In it was a pillow made from that feather bed that grandmother has slept on when she was little. One of the people who had sheltered grandmother thought she might like to have it. Rachel and her brother learn about the suffering their grandmother endured and how something as simple as a feather bed or a pillow can come to mean a lot to someone.
  The author has told this story beautifully, taking us on a journey with Rachel and her brother, back to a terrible time in the history of the world. An author's note in the back explains why the author wrote this story and why it is important to remember what happened in the past.

An Online Children’s Book Review Journal

Through The Looking Glass Children’s Book Reviews

Online book reviews for the child in your life featuring both new and popular children's book authors

Kids book reviews, including book reviews of chapter books, novels, picture books, and non-fiction from famous children’s literature authors. Your review site of books for children.

Welcome to Through the Looking Glass Book Reviews. We have moved! Please visit the new site at www.lookingglassreview.com to enjoy the new website.