Behar, Ruth. Across So Many Seas. Penguin/Paulsen, 02/2024. 258pp. Fiction. Trade $17.99. 978-0-5933-2340-3. GRADES 5–7. ADDITIONAL.
This four-part novel, told in first-person voices, depicts the stories of related twelve-year-old Sephardic Jewish girls. It begins in 1492, when Benvenida and her family are expelled from Spain; then follows her descendant Reina, 430 years later, banished from Turkey to Cuba; continues with Reina’s daughter Alegra in Cuba in 1961 forced to join an airlift to the U.S.; and concludes with Alegra’s daughter Paloma in Miami in 2003. Although different instigations spark each unwelcome journey, the girls feel similarly confused, abandoned, and ultimately resolute. The inclusion of poetic lyrics of Ladino songs illustrates how cultural expressions are maintained through generations. Readers who enjoyed Echo (Ryan, Scholastic, 2015) or Refugee (Gratz, Scholastic, 2017) will find resonance in this similar format with young people surviving difficult circumstances. While the first section dramatically shows the protagonist’s emotional connection to her Jewish community in its historical context, the other three sections set in the twentieth century depict individual drama within isolated families. Readers’ likely questions are answered in a dialogue by the subsequent generation, which burdens the narrative with recaps and missing information. Although there is an uneven empathetic grounding, Behar provides four brief, dramatic portraits across 500 years of Sephardic Jewish experience which young readers are unlikely to find elsewhere.
Erica Siskind—Oakland Public Library