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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