Review by Booklist Review
Everyone knows that Rosie is a musical prodigy. At 12 years old, she's already played her violin at Carnegie Hall--twice. But no one knows that Rosie is also a synesthete who sees music as colors and is overstimulated by the sounds and colors of everyday experiences. Overwhelmed by her endless music responsibilities, Rosie goes on strike: no more violin for the summer. Instead, she visits her grandparents with her mother, who is obsessed with getting Rosie to play the violin again. Rosie also meets a girl in her grandparents' shed who claims she's from the 1990s and who has the same name as her mother, Shanna. This Shanna, however, is more emotionally open than Rosie's mother and feels similarly stifled by her own parents. As Rosie and Shanna bond, Rosie reconciles the idea that the crestfallen preteen before her will eventually turn into the strict mother she knows today. Tweens should pair this moving and pensive read with a viewing of Disney's Turning Red for similar themes of intergenerational trauma and overbearing yet sympathetic mothers.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A talented tween with synesthesia probes her Jewish family's history in this sonorous tale by Isler (AfterMath), who contemplates the generational trauma caused by the Holocaust. Twelve-year-old "musical genius" Golden Rose Solomon, who experiences sounds "as textures and colors, as feelings and temperatures and tastes," longs to cultivate a part of her identity beyond "the girl with the violin." To the frustration of her rigid mother, Shanna, Rosie goes on a music strike, forgoing symphony commitments. As punishment, she's forced to join her mom on a visit to the dying grandmother Rosie barely knows. At Shanna's childhood home, Rosie "somehow, magically, impossibly" meets a 12-year-old version of Shanna, who longs to play violin and resents her mother--Rosie's grandmother--for forcing her to become a bat mitzvah. From Shanna, Rosie learns that her great-grandmother survived Auschwitz, an experience that echoes through future mother-daughter relationships in her family, making Rosie wonder whether changing the past could help Shanna understand her, and help revitalize her own connection with music. Intricately entwining interpersonal growth with each character's relationship to their Jewish faith and culture, Isler highlights the role of family history in identity formation through metaphorical time travel. Color-centric imagery rendered in immersive prose translates Rosie's synesthesia in this salient celebration of family, music, and neurodiversity. Ages 11--14. Agent: Emily Keyes, Keyes Agency. (Mar.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3--7--Rosie is a 12-year-old violin prodigy, but she is hiding her feelings, her fears, her hopes, and her synesthesia--she experiences sound as colors. Rosie and her mom go to Connecticut for the summer to stay with grandparents she barely knows; her grandmother is dying of dementia and often doesn't know her. Rosie refuses to continue the grueling violin practices and performances that she believes prevent her from being a regular tween girl enjoying sleepovers and crushes. But she doesn't throw a tantrum; it is a considered decision that her parents might better understand if they truly listened to her. As a result of tensions with her mom, Rosie spends time with her grandfather who shows her their family history, decimated and traumatized by the tragedies of the Holocaust. Encounters with a young girl, Shanna, on the farm lead to a tentative friendship and gives Rosie an understanding of the impact of growing up in an entirely different family structure. Rosie is able, in her gracious way, not only to learn from Shanna but to also help teach and guide her mother to a place of better understanding. Isler crafts an exceptionally honest portrayal of complicated mother-daughter dynamics, and a protagonist whose independence and kindness is a stunning solo. VERDICT A top pick for any middle school collection; a perfect book club pick and a reminder to all that patience and understanding can change lives.--Lee De Groft
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Review by Horn Book Review
At twelve years old, Rosie is a violin prodigy who can hear whole works of music in her head and has played Carnegie Hall twice. She also has synesthesia and can see music in colors, textures, temperature, and taste, but she keeps it to herself, because her mother already finds her prodigy brain "weird" and "dangerous." Their relationship is strained, as Mom is overly involved in managing Rosie's musical career. Tired of being known as "the girl with the violin," Rosie decides to quit playing in order to find herself and spends the summer at her grandparents' home in Connecticut, where her grandmother is dying. Wandering the property, she enters an abandoned shed, where she discovers a girl who turns out to be her mother when she was Rosie's age. Through repeated encounters, Rosie learns more about her family's history, including her great-grandparents' experience in Auschwitz and in a displaced persons camp after WWII. Suddenly, her mother's obsession with the violin is put into a larger family context that intersects with a hidden history of musical talent, neurodivergence, and a Jewish identity that was kept secret. An emotionally moving story about the ways that generational trauma can affect parent-child relationships and how the past persists into the present. Julie Hakim AzzamMay/June 2024 p.141 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Going on strike gives a synesthetic musical prodigy space in her life to learn the music of her Jewish heritage. Two things control 12-year-old Rosie's life: 1. Her unusual brain, with its full-sensory synesthesia, echoic musical memory, and exceptional violin talent; 2. her imperious stage mother. After her overpacked schedule causes Rosie to lose her only friend, she stops playing violin. Refusing music camp, she perforce accompanies her frustrated mother to her grandparents' for the summer--without devices as punishment. Connecticut offers a fresh start. Alongside secretly watching improv classes at the public library and swimming with her grandfather, Rosie learns about her Hungarian Jewish family history. Most intriguingly, through some time-travel anomaly, she encounters a girl she realizes is her mother. Shanna as a girl is so different from Shoshanna as a grown-up that Rosie wonders how the one became the other--and if she can change that outcome. Rosie is an appealing, sympathetic character who develops believably in her quest to expand both her life and her music. While the scope of her synesthesia is conveyed in a somewhat confusing way, the descriptions of her sensory perceptions are lyrical and evocative, though at times excessive. The depiction of generational trauma is poignant and subtle, from Rosie's Holocaust-survivor great-grandparents, to her dying, Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother, to her mother. However, as a literary device, Rosie's unexplained time-travel interactions with Shanna feel awkward and unnecessary. A quiet exploration of synesthesia, music, and family history. (discussion questions, author's note) (Fiction. 10-13) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
