Winterkill
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5.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From acclaimed author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, this incredibly gripping and timely story set during the Holodomor in 1930s Ukraine introduces young readers to a pivotal moment in history-- and how it relates to the events of today.
Nyl is just trying to stay alive. Ever since the Soviet dictator, Stalin, started to take control of farms like the one Nyl's family lives on, there is less and less food to go around. On top of bad harvests and a harsh winter, conditions worsen until it's clear the lack of food is not just chance... but a murderous plan leading all the way to Stalin.
Alice has recently arrived from Canada with her father, who is here to work for the Soviets... until Alice realizes that the people suffering the most are all ethnically Ukrainian, like Nyl. Something is very wrong, and Alice is determined to help.
Desperate, Nyl and Alice come up with an audacious plan that could save both of them -- and their community. But can they survive long enough to succeed?
Known as the Holodomor, or death by starvation, Ukraine's Famine-Genocide in the 1930s was deliberately caused by the Soviets to erase the Ukrainian people and culture. Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch brings this deeply resonant, and remarkably timely, historical world to life in a story about unity, perseverance, and a people's determination to overcome.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a timely, hard-hitting novel, Forchuk (Traitors Among Us) portrays the manufactured famine Holodomor ("murder by hunger") that Stalinists inflicted on Soviet Ukrainian farmers in the early 1930s. Compassionate 12-year-old Nyl narrates the harrowing story, which opens with the ethnically Ukrainian family—Nyl, his parents, and siblings Slavko, nine, and Yulia, 11—just managing to keep their farm going in February 1930. Stalinists, including foreign sympathizers, inventory the countryside's residences, forcing farmers to give up their land and join collective kolkhozes. Yulia is quickly won over to the cause, even in the face of Soviet deceptions such as the plundering of the family's harvest and livestock, and the deaths of several relatives. Desperate to earn money for their family's food and possible flight, Nyl and Slavko escape to work in a Soviet tractor factory and, as Nyl realizes the Soviets' true goals, he eventually joins with others who are working secretly to expose Stalin's genocidal actions to the outside world. Juxtaposing concepts of industrialization with the rhythms of farm life, the story and its grim events, together with an elucidative author's note, provide important historical context around history that has resonance for current events. Ages 8–12.
