Under Attack (Kidnapped From Ukraine, #1)

 

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

 Scholastic

978-1-546104513

320 pp.

Ages 8-13

January 2025

 

Apologies to author Marsha Skrypuch and Scholastic for my tardy review of this exceptional novel. They kindly ensured I received a copy of Under Attack and, while a gripping read, it has an emotional component for me, making my reading of it far more challenging. But, because it is so well written and told with such compassion and insight, I could not stay away from Under Attack. Years from now, readers will look to Under Attack as an authentic commentary of how the attack on Ukraine that started in 2022 played out for children and their families. 

 

Twelve-year-old Dariia Popkova's story did not just start on February 24, 2022, although this is the starting point of Under Attack. Her life in her family's fourth floor apartment in Mariupol would have been typical. Her father worked at the Azovstal steel plant. Her mother worked at a nail salon. And Dariia and her twin sister Rada went to school, had friends, did crafts, and loved using their cell phones. Then Putin declares a "special military operation" to free Ukrainians from their "Nazi" regime. When the first bomb hits their apartment, Dariia and her mother are separated from Dariia's dad and Rada. With this begins a separation of place and experience as they try to find their way back together.

 

Dariia and her mother shelter in a basement of a school supply depot with many others. Some are strangers like Sonya Marynovska and her four-year-old daughter Ariadna and two Tatar boys Rustem and Asan, but also a classmate Natalia and her dog Mimi. From their basement base, the twenty-eight hunker down, make unsafe outings to scavenge for food and water and get cell phone reception. They are "eating practically nothing, drinking bad water, and hearing the thunder of nonstop bombing overhead." (p. 53) Weeks turn into months and though Dariia and her mom are first looking to get to the Avostal steel plant where her father's army reserve is stationed and Rada is safe, ultimately they get the message to get to the humanitarian corridor and go to Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeast Ukraine. 

This wasn't a war.
This was the Russian Federation executing civilians because they were Ukrainians.
It was terrifying and senseless. (p. 82) 

Stealing an abandoned car, amidst the continued shelling, roaming tanks with white Z markings, and marauding Russian soldiers, Dariia, her mother, Rustem, Ariadna and Mimi the dog don't get very far before they are stopped and sent to a "filtration center" where they are told they would be evacuated to safer parts of Russia. 

 

Dariia, now separated from her mother, is sent with Rustem and other children–Katya, Volodya, Ihor, Dmytro and siblings Lilia and Vadim–to the Romashka Children's Camp where they are told about Putin, the benevolent president, who has helped rescue them from the Nazi regime of Zelensky. The children know it is propaganda but play along.

It made me angry that the Russians had brought me to this prison that looked and smelled like freedom. (p. 136)

When they are sent to their respective Russian "foster homes," the children vow to get in touch whenever they can with a Gmail account Liliya and Vadim had created to drop messages. Separated from any family they might have and each other, they are determined to keep their connections to each other, to the truth and their homeland.

This could be historical fiction. It could have been a story from the 1940s. I wish that it were. But it's a contemporary story from 2022 through the present, recounting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the continuing war in a fictionalized story. Someday Under Attack will be historical fiction and readers will shake their heads at the senselessness of the war. I can only hope that they'll be looking back from a time when Ukraine is free from Russian oppression and violence.

While a fictionalized story, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch takes the time and effort to understand the truths, like the truth about how the war started, the propaganda levelled at both Ukrainians and Russians, and the impact of the war on Ukrainians, from children to workers to the elderly. It is a tough story because of these truths which are so distressing and disheartening. Still Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is a master at telling such stories (e.g., Winterkill, Traitors Among Us, Dance of the Banished, and Making Bombs for Hitler), ensuring a sensitivity to her characters and her readers, and a thoroughness and accuracy of details.

It's fitting that I review Under Attack on a day which Christians commemorate as Good Friday. Like the day, this book is one of grief and injustice. And it is one that requires contemplation. We can only hope that after the grief comes a resurrection for Ukraine and a future of peace. Only history, and Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's follow-up books in the Kidnapped From Ukraine series, will tell.

• • • • • • •

Standoff, Book 2 in Kidnapped from Ukraine, releases in October, 2025.

 

 

I See London, I See France

Written by Sarah Mlynowski

HarperCollins

978-1-44344-317-3

377 pp.

Ages 13+

July 2017

I See London, I See France could be 19-year-old Sydney Rothstein's travel journal but it's more a story of her coming into herself, evolving from doormat and people-pleaser to the protagonist of her own adventure, all within the grand setting of Europe. It's a bumpy road with a lot of switchbacks, drama and tourist attractions and it's worth the ticket price.

This was the summer trip to Europe that wasn't supposed to happen, although Sydney and her BFF Leela Veer had been planning on it since they were children.  With Sydney's mom's agoraphobia putting the kibosh on her going to college anywhere but home in Maryland, it looked like Leela was going to end up in Europe with her boyfriend Matt whom she'd met at McGill.  But then Matt kisses some random girl and the two break up and he's supposed to cancel his ticket and Sydney's younger sister Addison agrees, reluctantly, to take on the job of caring for their mother for a month and Sydney finds enough money to go.  So, with Travel Europe guidebook in hand and a cell phone which she only uses with free WiFi, Sydney sets out on her excellent European adventure with her supportive but oft-coddled best friend.

They barely get off the ground when the two American girls learn Matt did not cancel his trip but is instead going to be travelling with his best friend Jackson.  Leela can't help stressing over what Matt is doing and if they're going to bump into the guys (and sometimes making sure they do!) and what she still feels for him.  Being the sensitive friend she is, Sydney goes along with Leela, trying to make sure she has a great time, sacrificing her own needs even while stressing over her sister's casual care-giving of their mother.  And, amidst all that emotional balancing act and visits to London, Amsterdam, Paris and several more planned and unplanned destinations, Sydney starts experiencing her own panic attacks and crushing on Jackson, whom Leela calls a "man whore."

How do you have a mind-blowing European adventures with a friend who vacillates between hating and stalking her ex/boyfriend while worrying about your agoraphobic mother who is being looked after by your sixteen-year-old sister? You put on that bon vivant attitude and keep trying new foods and drinks, seeking out the must-see tourist attractions, kissing some random guys and making sure that your BFF has the spectacular adventure you planned. Fortunately, Sydney finds she can talk to Jackson, even when she isn't supposed to be seeing him, and to her college friend Kat whom the girls visit in Paris and unfortunately whom Leela obviously feels threatens her friendship with Sydney.  It's a whirlwind trip of old and new friends, old and new loves, and food and drink–I think I fixated on the waffles and gelato–and selfies.  What they bring home, beyond the snow globes for Addison, is far more than can fit in their luggage.

There are a lot of teens starting their own European adventures right now, perhaps just for the summer or as part of a gap year.  I See London, I See France will certainly resonate with them as they leave family, friends and romances behind and seek to make new connections and memories, some fleeting, some life-long, along the way.  Sarah Mlynowski, who consistently delights with her entertaining and warm-hearted children's, teen and adult books,  takes on this rite of passage for many young people and creates a story that, even with the stressors of family and friends and decision-making, anyone would be pleased to have as their own.  Of course there's angst, both the kind as a result of others' actions and the self-imposed variety, but there's love and sex and novelty and experiences that go beyond the norm.  It's what a summer should be, at least once in your life. Bon voyage!