Shanghai Shadows

Prior to this book, I didn't know much about the Jews who fled to China during WWII. This was an interesting and eye opening book. The story line follows a young girl and her family as they flee Austria and move to Shanghai, China. When the Japanese take over Shanghai, Jews are forced to live in an isolated part of the city guarded by soldiers. The living conditions are horrid. Many die. I highly recommend this book to anyone, young and old, studying the Holocaust.

Sometimes fiction is truer than memoir. In reading a memoir, the reader is outside the story, looking in; but in good fiction, the reader enters the story and experiences it almost as if there. With her newest book: Shanghai Shadows, Lois Ruby conjures up the magic of "being there." The setting of the book may be Shanghai, but the real story is human nature. Ilse, her older brother Erich, and their mother and father have come to the awful realization that Austria is no place for a Jewish family. It is time to get out, but to where? There is only one possible place, Japanese occupied China--or Shanghai. At first, conditions are tolerable. As the political situation deteriorates and the United States enters the war, the immigrant population is imprisoned in a ghetto where the inhabitants have to deal with near starvation and an odious, cruel, but eccentric keeper of the gate. But it is the relationship that develops between Ilse and the little Chinese street-boy, Liu that make this refuge story so outstanding. Filled with daring resistance activities in which she and her brother participate, and inhabited by wonderfully drawn characters like Ilse's parents-- once proud and proper upper class Viennese Jews who evolve realistically as their fortunes change--this book is highly recommended. Ages 11-14. Reviewed by Rachel Kamin

Shanghai Shadows is another great read from Lois Ruby. The plot and setting are novel as well as well-researched. The main character Ilse is complex--at times not too admirable but always honest. Recommended for mature readers--too old for most young children.

For suspense and surprises, twists and turns, no one invents plots like Lois Ruby. Shanghai Shadows covers six years in the life of Ilse Shpann, her brother, Erich, and their parents - six years as "stateless refugees" in Shanghai, to which they have fled from Nazi-occuped Vienna. Amidst intensely realistic evocations of the sights, sounds, smells, and diverse population of the city, Ilse matures from a willful child to a courageous, self-sacrificing (but still willful) young woman. Her acerbic sense of humor and love of adventure sustain her as conditions of life for Jews and everyone else go from bad to worse. Ilse and Erich both work for a resistance group; their father, an unemployed violinist, grows apathetic; their proper mother is the iron will that keeps together and alive until a secret from Mrs. Shpann's past shatters the family. So eventful a plot is held together by sparkling dialogue and superb characterization, with major and minor characters all interacting believably as well as coherently. The grimness of the Shpann's six years in Shanghai never overwhelms the story because it is mitigated by flashes of humor, humanity, and Ilse's indomitable spirit. Ruby is the author of Swindletop and The Moxie Kid among other books. The talent that was glimpsed in those reaches fulfillment here, in a historical novel that should not be missed! Highly recommended for grades 6 - 9. Reviewed by Linda R. Silver Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter, Sept./Oct. 2007