LS5603: Historical Fiction 3—“Between Shades of Grey” by Ruta Sepetys

1.     BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sepetys, Ruta. Between Shades of Gray. New York: Philomel Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-399-25412-3

2.     PLOT SUMMARY
Fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and her little brother are woken up in the middle of the night by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and are taken from their home in Lithuania to a work camp hundreds of miles away. While trying to fight for her life against hunger, disease, the elements, and Soviet officers, Lina chronicles her journey in her art, leaving traces of herself behind so that her father can find them again.   

3.     CRITICAL ANALYSIS characters, plot, setting, theme, style, authenticity
            Lina is an interesting heroine. She has a fiery spirit and is a very normal teenager, one who has not been privy to most of the political discussions her parents have had. She is stubborn and quick to draw conclusions about the world around her, which causes her heartache at least once and often it lets the reader be ahead of her in the curve of understanding what’s happening around her; the reader, unmired in emotion can figure out the pieces before she can, as she keeps herself behind by jumping to wrong conclusions because of her emotions. However, her emotional point of view is a great thing because it lets the reader feel and understand how Lina feels as she goes through her trials and tribulations.

            As yet another World War II book, it sets itself apart by being about another part of the war that often gets overlooked, at least in American classrooms: the people whose lives were forever changed because of Josef Stalin and Soviet Russia. Sepetys, in her author’s note, talks about how her grandfather was a Lithuanian military officer who had many family members who were deported and had tragedies befall them like the characters of this book. She took two trips to Lithuania and interviewed and researched the time period. Almost all the characters in the book are fictional though, except for one that shows up at the end of the book, but the experiences that happened in this book were a reality that many faced.

4.     REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

·         New York Times  notable book

·         An international bestseller

·         A Carnegie Medal Nominee

·         From The Washington Post: “Few books are beautifully written, fewer still are important; this novel is both.”

·         From Booklist: " Sepetys, the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee, estimates that the Baltic States lost more than one-third of their populations during the Russian genocide. Though many continue to deny this happened, Sepetys' beautifully written and deeply felt novel proves the reality is otherwise. Hers is an important book that deserves the widest possible readership. Grades 7-12"

5.     CONNECTIONS
Other books about work camps and the Soviet regime in WWII

• The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig
• Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan

Further resources about Gulag/Russian work camps

• http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php
• http://www.dpcamps.org/russianpow.html
• http://www.gendercide.org/case_soviet.html
• http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n1p39_michaels.html

Note: most of these sites are very text-heavy and would come off as boring unless doing an actual history project. But they are a good place to start for information. Making a game of it (like a digital information-based scavenger hunt) could be a way to possibly help make that information more digestible for teenagers.