Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Entertainer and the Dybbuk

Full Cast Audio does a nice job of providing voices for this humorous yet serious story of a post WWII ex-GI turned ventriloquist. Freddie T. Birch is a ventriloquist without an act-- until he is possessed by a dybbuk, a Jewish ghost, with an agenda of his own. Even if you don’t listen to this as an audio book, the clever story will entertain and inform readers from ages 10 and up.

The author, Sid Fleischman, uses humor to tell the painful story of a 12-year-old Jewish boy, Avrom Amos, who was shot six times by a German SS officer. Avrom has returned to earth to seek revenge for his and his sister’s cold-blooded murders. He inhabits the body of the mediocre ventriloquist in order to find his antagonist and in the process, saves Freddie from showbiz failure. Despite Freddie’s initial hostility and disdain towards his new Jewish “friend," the ventriloquist grows in empathy for the orphaned boy and comes to love and depend upon him.

Clearly fantasy, home school families will have a lot of historical and religious material to chew on in this short, yet memorable, novel. (Harper Collins, 2007)



1 comment:

Jean said...

Talk about a unique approach to telling a story...

Sounds complex and compelling.

Jean

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