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Summary: "The Journey Back" By Johanna Reiss
Review: After reading "The Journey Back" I am more aware of the hardships, dangers, and deprivations Jews and others went through after World War II. The story takes place in Holland, and its about what happens to the members of a Jewish family after the war ends, and they return home. The main character in the sotry is a thirteen-year-old girl named Annie de Leeuw. She and jer sister Sini might have been killed if it weren't for the Oostervelds, the courageous family who hid them for three years. The other main characters are Annie's father and her oldest sister Rachel. When Annie returns home she finds that her family no longer knows one another. Her mother is dead; her father is distracted. Her sister Sini tries to make up for lost time by going dancing every night, and Rachel has changed her religion to Christianity. Another important character in the book is Magda, Annie's stepmother. No matter how hard she tries, Annie cannot seem to please her. To Magda, Annie is the most imperfect girl in the entire universe. She criticizes Annie's clothes, hair, manners, and about everything else. For this reason I think Annie's conflict is man vs. himself since she has to built a new life for herself. I like the book in general, though the end was a dissappointment since it didn't give details about what would happen to Annie and her family. I wish the author would explain things better, and not just leave some conflicts unresolved, like in the case of the mean stepmother. My predicitions for the future of Annie's family are that the stepmother will always be mean, and Annie will have to get used to her new life. I give the book four stars. Like I already said the end needs some work. I still think it's a very informative book, and it helped me learn more about Worl War II.
Rating:
Summary: "The Journey Back" By Johanna Reiss
Review: After reading "The Journey Back" I am more aware of the hardships, dangers, and deprivations Jews and others went through after World War II. The story takes place in Holland, and its about what happens to the members of a Jewish family after the war ends, and they return home. The main character in the sotry is a thirteen-year-old girl named Annie de Leeuw. She and jer sister Sini might have been killed if it weren't for the Oostervelds, the courageous family who hid them for three years. The other main characters are Annie's father and her oldest sister Rachel. When Annie returns home she finds that her family no longer knows one another. Her mother is dead; her father is distracted. Her sister Sini tries to make up for lost time by going dancing every night, and Rachel has changed her religion to Christianity. Another important character in the book is Magda, Annie's stepmother. No matter how hard she tries, Annie cannot seem to please her. To Magda, Annie is the most imperfect girl in the entire universe. She criticizes Annie's clothes, hair, manners, and about everything else. For this reason I think Annie's conflict is man vs. himself since she has to built a new life for herself. I like the book in general, though the end was a dissappointment since it didn't give details about what would happen to Annie and her family. I wish the author would explain things better, and not just leave some conflicts unresolved, like in the case of the mean stepmother. My predicitions for the future of Annie's family are that the stepmother will always be mean, and Annie will have to get used to her new life. I give the book four stars. Like I already said the end needs some work. I still think it's a very informative book, and it helped me learn more about Worl War II.
Rating: 
Summary: Bittersweet
Review: Although this book is an insightful recountanance of the rebuilding process after World War II, it does not completly fulfill the reader's interest in happened to Annie and her family later. It still has Johanna Reiss' intuitive, touching writing style, but fails to explain what becomes of the characters decades later. It instead depicts only about a year in their lives, in which a few eventful but rather unimportant things happen. It also leaves many questions unanswered that were presented and dwelled upon. I cannot imagine understanding or enjoying this book if I had not read its predecessor, "The Upstairs Room" first. The short introduction provided would fail to adequately aid someone who had not previously read the latter to understand the depth and humanity of this saga. I am pleased to say, however, that it is well written, sad yet strangely joyous, and thoughtful; all the qualities that give a book the potential to be a good one. If you are looking for Annie's complete life story post war, it will be fairly disappointing, but if you are merely interested in what occurs immediately afterward, this book is ideal.
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Summary: Jaclyn's Book Review--2nd hr
Review: Annie de Leeuw, a young Jewish girl, has been hiding during WWII for almost 3 years with her older sister Sini at Johan Oosterveld's house with his wife Dentje, and Opoe, his mother. Now the war is over and Annie can finally be together with her family!
But things just aren't the same at her house, Rachel (Annie's eldest sister) has found a new religion, Sini is out all night dancing, her father is getting remarried, and her mother had died during the war. Annie starts finding herself missing the Oosterveld's...will things work out?
I thought this book was a little confusing at times. The plot--returing home--is a little dull also. Though I think the author has good description & her openings have a good start. She keeps you hoping that something good will happen to Annie, and is even a little suspensful.
People who might like reading this book would propbably be people who like reading about a persons feelings, or read the first book (which I had not),or just people who don't like reading action books.^_^
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Summary: The Journey Back
Review: In the 4th grade, i read the prequel to this book, THE UPSTAIRS ROOM. Now, 4 years later, i read THE JOURNEY BACK. The first couple chapters quickly refreshed my memory of what happened during WWII to Annie, and i feel they would have sufficed as an introduction had i not read THE UPSTAIRS ROOM. this book proves that although a treaty was signed, the war was no yet over for the people involved.
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Summary: An interesting but bland sequel
Review: It seems like many sequels to books about the Shoah are hit-and-miss; sometimes there will be a gripping account of a return to life, healing, love, and a semblance of normalcy, but more often than not it's just an ordinary undistinguished account relating what happened after the War. This book falls into the latter category. Unlike many sequels of this nature, here the immediate family have more or less all stayed alive and are reunited soon after the War ends. Mr. de Leeuw and the three sisters (who appear to each be about ten years apart in age) have been in hiding, not camps or ghettos. They don't bear the same kind of intense and painful scars from that experience as someone who was in a ghetto or camp would. They were in relative safety, and Holland was no Poland or Hungary. Mrs. de Leeuw, while dead, died in the first book in a hospital because she had been very sick for a long time, not because she was murdered by the Nazis. The de Leeuws have lost friends, neighbours, and relatives, but the immediate family has not been split up, nor do they have to spend time in displacement, rehabiliation, or refugee centres, immigrate, trek across foreign lands on their way back to their native Holland, or wait around in agony waiting for word of the other members of their immediate family. They have much less to deal with than other people in post-Shoah sequels usually do. The most serious problems in here are having to get used to living together as a family again, Annie's overbearing new stepmother Magda and Magda's 18 year old daughter Nell, Sini's constant dancing with soldiers at night and her fights with her father over it, and Rachel's conversion to Christianity and the family strife that is causing. Maybe she did have a spiritual epiphany when the family who were hiding her took her to church with them for Xmas services, but it just seems tragic that someone who survived the Shoah, who had to spend those years in hiding instead of living a normal adult life all on account of her religion, would embrace a new religion instead of taking pride in her own religion once she's free to practise it again. It's an interesting story, but really anticlimactic and overly domestic after all which went before. This recounting of what happened afterwards just isn't as gripping as the accounts of people who lost most of their families, didn't return to their native lands, or had it much worse than merely being in hiding in a relatively safe nation-state like Holland.
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Summary: The Journey Back
Review: Overall The Journey Back was a great book. Although the reading gets somewhat boring after a while you should read through to the end so that you can figure out what you really think of it. There's a good story to it that people interested in the holocaust would like to read. It seems that you don't here enough about the afterword of the holocaust and that is what this book is here to tell you.
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Summary: Finally a book about after WWII
Review: The Journey Back is an interesting story about how a Jewish girl after hiding for 3 years reunites with her family. Reiss's descriptions of the poverty that existed after the war are astounding in their acuracy. This book is amazing and I suggest you read it
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Summary: An Interesting Story after WW2
Review: The War is over and Annie and her family are safe now. Througout the war they hid in different farmhouses, trying to escape going to the camps. But now Annie has to leave the people she lived with for so long, the Ooostervelds, whom she loves, and go live back in the city. When she gets there she has to see a special doctor for her legs, since she walks crooked, for being cooped up for so long. She goes to a new school, where she is very shy and has a hard time making friends. Her Mother is dead, and her Father remarries a lady that already has a daughter and Annie just can't get along with her. I thought it was very nicely written, and had some very interesting facts in it.
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Summary: Journey Back : an amazing story
Review: This book is about a girl how has just survived the holacost. She is learning how to get back to her normal routine. In the begining, this book is a bit depressing but as it gose on she finds new friends and stays in touch with old ones. I think this book is great because the charters are so belivable & realistic. The first chapter or so were boring but then people started coming back from the camps and some didn't. This book is an amazing piece of literature.
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