Room for one more

In 1942, 12-year-old Rosetta Wolfson lives with her Jewish family in Montreal, far away from the war in Europe. The Wolfsons take in Isaac Guttman, a young Jewish refugee who fled Germany for Britain, only to later be deported to Canada. Isaac is guarded and slow to trust, but gradually shares parts of his past with Rosetta. Polak's novel introduces an often-overlooked facet of the Holocaust: that Britain expelled German nationals (Nazis as well as Jews and those rescued in the Kindertransport), shipping them to internment camps in Canada and Australia. Isaac is grateful to have been taken in by the Wolfsons, but that doesn't prevent him from feeling guilt over the fates of his family members and experiencing anti-Semitism in Canada. Secondary plots involving Rosetta's efforts at public speaking, and her gradual realization that her best friend harbors anti-Semitic views, are also well handled. A strong family story; pair with Lucy Strange's Our Castle By the Sea (2019) for another look at wartime expulsion of Germans.--Kay Weisman Copyright 2010 Booklist

Rosetta's life changes when a 16-year-old refugee from the Nazis comes to live with her.A grade six girl in 1942 Montreal, narrator Rosetta has two sisters, but she hadn't expected to gain an older brother. Isaac fled Hitler's Germany on the Kindertransport but was later interned by the British government. Now freed, he's alone in a foreign country. Isaac's entry into Rosetta's family isn't frictionless: Rosetta squabbles with her sisters, she's jealous of Isaac's relationship with her father, and she snoops in his few possessions. But she and Isaac grow close, and what she learns about his past is worrying. Rosetta is from a family of light-skinned observant Jews and is ignorant of religious segregation or persecution. Isaac, with one Jewish parent and one Christian, saw his own mothera tall, blonde, blue-eyed "Aryan goddess" who works for the Nazisrepudiate him. Even in theoretically liberal-minded Montreal, Isaac's not free of persecution. Jewish quotas will likely keep him from attending medical school at McGill. Moreover, Rosetta's best friend's brother, a handsome blond non-Jew, says vile anti-Semitic things to Isaac. Italicized, phonetically rendered accents ("So, one afternoon, I vent der") keep Isaac at arm's length even as Rosetta grows closer to him, and there's more than one "remarkable coincidence" holding the whole together, but readers will respond to how flawed, likable Rosetta learns how to welcome refugees wholeheartedly.As timely as historical fiction can be. (Historical fiction. 8-11) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.