Yossel's journey

Eight-year-old Yossel's family flees Russia to resettle in America because "the tsar is sending his soldiers to hurt Jewish people." After a stop in New York, a freight wagon takes the three into the desert "near a Navajo Indian Reservation," where they inherited a trading post from a late uncle. Yossel learns English and Navajo words from customers and eventually befriends a Navajo boy, Thomas. Shared moments over food and play as well as a sleepover in Thomas' hogan build to a sense of belonging for Yossel in America. Vibrant acrylic illustrations evoke the grandeur and palette of the American Southwest; the jewel-toned, abstract landscapes are especially stunning. Lasky (The Night Journey; Marven of the Great North Woods) is no stranger to Jewish resettlement stories. An author's note and references offer the basis for this fictionalization, but an opportunity was lost to parallel Yossel's experience with the U.S. government's displacement of Navajos. A gorgeously illustrated, if somewhat rosy, story of a cross-cultural nineteenth-century friendship.

Because the tsar is "sending his soldiers to hurt Jewish people," eight-year-old Yossel's family emigrates from Russia to America, traveling by train, boat, and covered wagon to New York City, then past Santa Fe to a town that borders a Navajo reservation. There, they run a trading post left to them by family, which is filled with "barrels of coffee and beans and seed." Yossel learns "English and Navajo words for things like coffee and nails.... But I am afraid to speak." When he meets an Indigenous boy his age, Thomas, they find ways to communicate and share--Yossel's mother offers blintzes, and Thomas "shows me where the ghosts of Navajos live and where rattlesnakes sleep"--and then build a friendship that grows even closer when Yossel makes Thomas's infant sibling laugh for the first time. Lines by Lasky (the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series) balance the feel of wide-open spaces and family comforts ("The smell of sagebrush meets the cinnamon of Mama's honey cake"), while Navajo artist Yazzie's acrylic paintings portray white-outlined characters and saturated landscapes that draw similarities between Russia and the American Southwest. An author's note and further reading conclude but elide discussion of the U.S. government's displacement of Navajo people. Ages 5--9. (Sept.)

In the 19th-century American Southwest, a Jewish boy from Russia befriends a Navajo boy. Yossel's family is fleeing Russia to avoid the soldiers of the czar. They sail first to New York, then take a train to Topeka and another to Santa Fe, and finally travel by horse-drawn covered freight wagon to a Navajo reservation. Uncle Izzy left Yossel's family his trading post when he died, and now they're responsible for selling "coffee and beans and seed" to their neighbors. Eight-year-old Yossel learns some English and Navajo from listening to the customers but doesn't speak to anyone until he meets Thomas, a Navajo boy. Stylized illustrations depict the boys playing with Star Eye the sheep, eating blintzes, and having a sleepover at Thomas' hogan. Yazzie's warm acrylics in bright pinks, blues, and yellows paint the setting in the colors of desert sunshine (even Russia and New York seem Southwestern, with New York homes that "rub shoulders" illustrated as pink-trimmed, greenery-draped, single-story cottages). Given Yossel's history as someone forced to flee his home due to ethnic violence, it's a surprise to see none of the parallel story for Thomas (during roughly the time of the forced deportation of the Navajo by the U.S. government). Instead, this is a pleasing, sun-drenched tale of friendship in a new place. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Though not without a misstep, this is a charming picture book that blends two rarely combined cultures. (author's note, further reading) (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.