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What Members Thought
amazing production beautiful music intricate story heartwarming loved it
Feb 03, 2016
Heydi Smith
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
great-outdoors,
kids-middle-years
A powerful book that speaks volumes about what it was truly like during WWII, without being super scary.
Here it is! This is my Newbery pick for the year. I love this book!
I love this book. I could gush about this book for hours and hours.
First the story centers around a harmonica. When I first read that, I was skeptical. A harmonica of all instruments.
The harmonica travels and the story tells the tale of four people. I think the first one is in Germany, the second one is in Germany, the third is in Philadelphia, and the fourth is in California.
This book is chock full of music and if you listen to the audiobook, you actually hear the music. Whenever a song is m ...more
First the story centers around a harmonica. When I first read that, I was skeptical. A harmonica of all instruments.
The harmonica travels and the story tells the tale of four people. I think the first one is in Germany, the second one is in Germany, the third is in Philadelphia, and the fourth is in California.
This book is chock full of music and if you listen to the audiobook, you actually hear the music. Whenever a song is m ...more
I ended up browsing a NYT book review on this one to see if there was any hope for these characters. That being said, Munoz Ryan is good at pulling at the heart strings. I believe I cried through the entire second part. The overall message is fantastic that your fate is not yet sealed even at the worst possible moment.
Aug 05, 2015
Julie
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
newbery-2015,
hub-2016
At first this novel feels like a fairy tale. Otto is lost in the woods and encounters three sisters with a fairy-tale story about being abandoned by their parents to a witch who curses them to remain with her until they can break her spell.
The story then moves on three different times to other teens who each face a trial. Each child has a musical talent and some kind of disadvantage: physical, emotional 0r race.
Each story can stand on its own, like a musician; however, combined they are like an ...more
The story then moves on three different times to other teens who each face a trial. Each child has a musical talent and some kind of disadvantage: physical, emotional 0r race.
Each story can stand on its own, like a musician; however, combined they are like an ...more
I was really into this book until the ending. What can I say? I don't like tidy endings. The audiobook was nice for the most part, although the singing and some of the harmonica playing got a bit tiresome. I think I keep going back to the same thing - there are some truly remarkable books about WWII (The Book Thief, anyone?), so why do people even bother trying to compete?
Overall, it's a 3. I won't read it again, but I might use it in reader's advisory. ...more
Overall, it's a 3. I won't read it again, but I might use it in reader's advisory. ...more
Very unique way of entwining the harmonica in so many different lives. Read the book as I listened to the audio version. Audio version was better because it had music (harmonica, piano) you heard. That added so much to the story.
The audio of this is absolutely gorgeous, the music complementing the beautiful words perfectly, and all four narrators were great. I'll be reading it again in prose, so more review of the story then!
...more
4.5 Music is important! I am very glad I listened to this book on audio. The music is as important as the plot and the memorable characters in this inspirational piece of literature.
The audiobook was spectacular. Well deserving of the Odyssey honor. The music was beautiful
Dec 29, 2015
Connie Scharre
rated it
liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
phs-library-books
