The Length of a String

The Length of a String

Publisher

Dial Books

Publication Year

2018

ISBN

9780735229471

Pages

384 pages

Genre

realism

Format

novel

Item Type

Fiction

Annotation

Imani knows exactly what she wants as her big bat mitzvah gift: to find her birth parents. She loves her family and her Jewish community in Baltimore, but she has always wondered where she came from, especially since she's black and almost everyone she knows is white. Then her mom's grandmother--Imani's great-grandma Anna--passes away, and Imani discovers an old journal among her books. It's Anna's diary from 1941, the year she was twelve and fled Nazi-occupied Luxembourg alone, sent by her parents to seek refuge in Brooklyn, New York. Anna's diary records her journey to America and her new life with an adoptive family of her own. And as Imani reads the diary, she begins to see her family, and her place in it, in a whole new way.

Grade Level

3-5; 6-8

Lexile Measure

730L

Diversity Topics

Family Relationships; Race & Culture; Adoption; Family member death; Race discrimination; adoptive siblings; birth parents; adopted child; death of a grandparent; racism

Main Character

female child

Race/Ethnicities

Black / African-American / Brown-skinned

Awards

Sydney Taylor Book Award, 2019, Honor, Older Reader

Keywords

religon; Jewish; Bat Mitzvah; great-grandparent death; Holocaust

Diversity Impact

direct

The Length of a String

Find in your library

Find on Amazon

Find on Barnes & Noble

Share

COinS