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Louise (64 KP) rated The Weight of Water in Books

Jul 2, 2018

After reading One by Sarah Crossan I wanted delve into more of her works. This is Sarah's debut novel and I really enjoyed it. What makes her books unique is that they are written in verse, so you can either read it like poetry or just as a normal book.

The weight of water follows Kasienka and her mother who are Polish migrants travelling to the UK to find her father who upped and left one day never to return, all they know is that he lives in Coventry. They manage to rent a bed sit with one bed that they have to share and with little money Kasienka's mum takes on a hospital job. Kasienka's mum is determined to find her husband and as Kasi's English is better than hers she is forced to walk streets of Coventry looking for her dad. Not only does she have to contend with her mum, she also started a new school where she doesn't fit in and becomes a target to bullies. The only thing that Kasienka was good at was swimming which she loved and was also pretty good at. It was where she could escape, It was there she met William.

I loved this book, it is so realistic, raw and heart - breaking. In the UK we have thousands of Polish people come to live in the UK sometimes for work and sometimes for unknown reasons but what we forget is how hard and challenging it can be for them to arrive in a country they are not familiar with and the language barrier.You also forget how difficult it must be at school for them - due to Kasi's language barrier the teacher was not aware of how intelligent she was and enrolled her in a younger year. Kasi is 12 and a very intelligent girl who just wants to fit in at school or even better to return to Poland with her Mother and Father. You see the struggles that she has to overcome and her developing and hitting puberty. I really liked the fact that Sarah Crossan didn't shy away and told us Kasi's periods starting and her becoming more body conscious it makes it so much more real and relatable.

The bit that I really liked was when Kasienka realised that she had treated a new girl at her school back in Poland just as she was being by the bullies in her school, she wasn't perfect and she knew it.

This is a brilliant coming of age story that could be classed as middle grade though it has more depth to it as deals with Poverty, bullying, immigration and families

I definitely recommend this book for anyone that wants to read YA,Poetry or contemporary

Overall I rated 4.5 out 5 stars.

Kudos

Dianne Robbins (1738 KP) created a post

May 26, 2019

Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal by Renia Spiegel.

I read about this diary, the history of its author and poet, and an excerpt of the diary in Smithsonian Magazine earlier this year. I'm so excited that I get to read an advanced copy. It isn't released to the public until September 2019.

This is the first time it has been translated into English. It covers 2 years in the life of a 16-year-old Jewish girl living in Poland before and during the German occupation. In it, she records her life, falling in love, and life in a Jewish ghetto, before she was cruelly executed.

She had given the diary to her boyfriend for safekeeping. He recorded the events of her death at the hands of the Nazis. He gave the diary to a friend before he was sent away to a concentration camp and it was returned to him after the war when he was living in the United States. He eventually gave it to her mother in the early 1950s.

Renia's sister, Elizabeth, was unaware of its existence until after her mother passed away in 1969. Elizabeth put it in a safety deposit box for many years because she couldn't bear to read it. However, knowing the significance of it, she eventually had it published and includes her remarks and memories of the events in an epilogue.