Paper Chains

July 1, 2017

Gr 4-7-Ana and Katie are Boston fifth graders attempting to figure out where they fit into the world while navigating the challenges that come with family and friendship. Ana is outgoing and athletic, struggling to deal with her mother's depression after her father left the family to pursue his professional hockey career. Ana's intimidating Russian grandmother (Babushka) is moving in to help out, but what Ana really wants is for her father to come home. Katie, a straight-A student adopted from Russia when she was just a baby, is a little bit timid owing to her heart transplant and protective, loving parents. Katie is having difficulty melding her current life with the unknown legacy of her birth mother. Both girls share a Russian heritage. Cultural traditions such as nesting dolls, aspic, and even the scary witch Baba Yaga are sprinkled throughout. Alternating chapters allow the thoughts and voices of both girls to develop into endearing, authentic personalities. As the narrative progresses, Ana and Katie (with the assistance of Ana's little brother Mikey) strive to find the courage to embrace their burgeoning identities and confidence. An exciting search for Ana's father adds action. This tale stands powerfully on its own, but fans of Vickers's previous book, Like Magic, will enjoy the happy realization that Paper Chains inhabits the same world. VERDICT A captivating story with tremendous heart; recommended for most collections.-Alyssa Annico, Youngstown State University, OH

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2017
Secrets and family upheaval test Katie and Ana's newly minted friendship. Adventurous Ana makes fifth grade fun, although Katie still misses the mountains and her friends back in Utah. She's grateful for the new heart she received after her adoption from a Russian orphanage and for her loving parents, but lately she's been wondering about her birthparents and life before adoption. Chafing at her mother's overprotectiveness, Katie admires Ana's fearlessness, unaware it's prompted by desperation. Ana's Jewish family has been torn apart since her father, who played hockey for the Boston Bruins, abruptly left them. Ana's dropped hockey; her little brother, Mikey, is bullied by a gang of her classmates; their mother's depressed. Soon their dad's Russian-immigrant mother, Babushka, arrives to take charge. Ana resents her imperious ways and weird meals, so when Katie bonds with Babushka, friction develops between the girls. Ana envies the attention Katie's loving, white Christian parents lavish on her; Katie longs for a Babushka to explain and share her Russian heritage. As misunderstandings mount, the white girls' friendship threatens to unravel. The complicated realities of adoption--for example, that Katie's intact adoptive family resembles Ana's fractured one in ways an intact biological family does not--are portrayed with insight rare in children's fiction. The also-rare depiction of a Russian-born adoptee (one of more than 46,000 in the U.S.) is especially welcome. A well-told story celebrating the power of friendship to comfort and heal when families fall short. (Fiction. 8-12)

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January 1, 2018
Alternating third-person narratives focus on friends Katie and Ana. Katie worries about her adoptive parents' reaction to her expression of gratitude for her birth parents on her "Thankful Chain" (a countdown-to-Christmas family tradition). Meanwhile, Ana's Hanukkah is marred by her father's absence and her prickly grandmother's visit. The novel is honest about how difficult changes can be, but it's ultimately reassuring.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

November 1, 2017
Alternating third-person narratives focus on friends Katie and Ana as tensions rise in both of their families during the holiday season. Katie worries about her adoptive parents' reaction to her expression of gratitude for her birth parents on the final link of her Thankful Chain (a countdown-to-Christmas family tradition). Meanwhile, Ana's Hanukkah (respectfully portrayed, though with a minor dreidel-related error) is marred by her father's absence and her prickly grandmother's visit. The novel is honest about how difficult changes, internal and external, can be, but is ultimately reassuring: traditions, even beloved ones, are allowed to evolve. shoshana flax

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)