A Sky Full of Song by Susan Lynn Meyer

A Sky Full of Song by Susan Lynn Meyer. Union Square Kids, 2023. 9781454947844

Rating:  1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 4

Format: Hardcover

Genre: Historical fiction

What did you like about the book? In 1905 11-year-old Shoshana flees her hometown in Ukraine with her mother and three sisters to escape pogroms and the increasing oppression of the Russian government.  Shoshana’s Papa and older brother Anshel had left three years earlier, for a homestead in North Dakota.  After an arduous ocean voyage to New York, followed by trains across the country, the family arrives in ‘Nordakota’ to start their new life.  Papa and Anshel have set up house in a dreary dugout that feels quite tiny with all its new occupants; Mama, Shoshana, and older Libke quickly make it more homey with makeshift wallpaper and little curtains on the one window.  Shoshana and Libke are used to hard work and helping their mother with their 3-year-old twin sisters, but farm life on the prairie brings new and unfamiliar challenges.  Adjusting to the remoteness of their new home and getting reacquainted with Papa and Anshel are difficult enough, but there are many other struggles. Shoshana and Libke must start school in a one-room schoolhouse; the girls’ sisterly bond is strained by how quickly Shoshana, three years younger, learns English and assimilates while Libke misses her friends back home and scolds Shoshana for turning her back on their Jewish traditions.  They both endure anti-Semitic sentiments, ranging from classmates’ microaggressions about participation in the school’s Christmas pageant to outright physical assault by three older boys.  Tensions mount between Shoshana and Libke, and between the family and their prairie neighbors, until an intense blizzard coinciding with the last night of Hanukkah provides an opportunity for illumination and self-reflection.

A 2024 Sydney Taylor Honor book, A Sky Full of Song draws obvious comparisons to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books (and even Fiddler on the Roof), but provides a unique perspective on the homesteading experience of Jewish Eastern European immigrants.  Shoshana’s first-person narration highlights the complexities of her new life and allows readers to empathize with her: she is proud of her heritage and loves her family deeply, but is still embarrassed when her sister speaks Yiddish or her mother wears her headscarf in public.  She is indignant about the treatment of the indigenous Dakota, and is able to connect that to the experiences of Jewish people in her homeland under the Russian regime.  Descriptive language makes it easy to envision the prairie landscape and its flora and fauna, including the migration of sandhill cranes that gives the book its title.  Lighthearted interactions with the little sisters and a subplot about a kitten Shoshana smuggles on the train from New York add levity and humor during a great deal of hardship.  Susan Lynn Meyer shares details of her research process and the inspiration for the story in an in-depth author’s note.

Anything you did not like about the book?  No

To whom would you recommend this book? Frank discussion about menstruation and the use of ethnic slurs definitely point this book toward older elementary and middle school readers.  Kids who have read the Wilder series should definitely read this, along with Linda Sue Park’s Prairie Lotus, to gain a broader understanding of life on the prairie.

Who should buy this book? Public and elementary school libraries

Where would you shelve it? Fiction

Should we (librarians) put this on the top of our “to read” piles?  No

Reviewer’s Name, Library (or school), City:  Leigh Russell King, Lincoln Street School, Northborough, Massachusetts.

Date of review: June 21, 2024