APRIL 23 • 2020 | 33

Arts&Life

book review

AMAZON

The Blackbird Girls

Themes of resilience may resonate
with young readers.

O

n a beautiful April
morning in 1986, two
schoolgirls in the Soviet
town of Pripyat looked up from
their schoolyard to see billow-
ing smoke coming from the
Chernobyl nuclear
plant where both
their fathers worked.
This is the open-
ing chapter of The
Blackbird Girls, (March
2020, Viking), a
newly released young
reader’
s histori-
cal novel by Anne
Blankman.
The book’
s focus is
not so much on the
world’
s worst nuclear
disaster, but the evolution of a
friendship between two girls
who have been told by parents,
and society, not to trust and
befriend one another.
Valentina, a Jewish girl, and
Oksana, her blonde, blue-
eyed non-Jewish classmate,
are raised in a Soviet society
where teachers instruct them
that nuclear power is the safest
energy source on Earth and the
Motherland will always take
care of them.
Oksana learns from her
father that Jews are rich and
stingy and swindle others out
of job promotions. Valentina is
taught not to get every answer
right on a test because it would
draw suspicions upon her and
her Jewish family.
When Oksana is torn from
her parents during the evacua-
tion of Pripyat, her well-being
rests in the hands of Valentina’
s
family — a Jewish family she
has been taught to hate.
The story follows the girls, as

they journey across the Soviet
Union to Le
ningrad. There,
they live under the care of
Valentina’
s grandmother, in a
communal apartment complex
where residents share a kitchen,
phone, bathrooms and a com-
mon TV/game room. Soon, the
girls learn to trust
and befriend each
other as they share
not only a grand-
mother and com-
mon living spaces
but emotions such
as grief, separation
from parents and a
fearful knowledge
they may never
return to life as they
knew it.
During these times of uncer-
tainty and social distancing,
it may seem an odd choice to
distract young readers with a
historical fiction novel about
the world’
s worst nuclear disas-
ter. But the themes of resilience,
cooperation and friendship, and
the unbreakable mother-daugh-
ter bonds woven throughout,
may be just the book that young
readers need to show the resil-
ience of humanity and how
people make it to the other side
in even the darkest times.
The Blackbird Girls also
addresses what it was like for
Jews to live under the Soviet
Union and the permeation of
anti-Semitism in Soviet society.
It offers a lesson for contem-
porary times, where children
reading the book discover the
best way to overcome prejudice
and bigotry is through learning
about others through friend-
ship.
The Blackbird Girls is available
online, on Audible and wherev-
er books are sold.

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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