The First State of Being

A time traveler! So fun! This is a cool idea for a book. I especially liked that the author cites future philosophers and future theories because it made the creation of her future more credible and thoughtful.

My one beef (*spoilers*): There is this big reveal at the very end when the time traveler - Ridge Sabio - gets back to his time in the future after visiting the thrilling year of 1999 and he reveals that he met Elizabeth Gibson and his whole family (of time travel scientist geniuses) freaks out and asks him all these questions about her and I was like, wait, who the poop is Elizabeth Gibson? So I RE-READ the entire book to figure out where she was mentioned because she was clearly someone important and I had obviously missed it and discover that she HADN'T been mentioned anywhere in the book. ?? And then I proceed to read the epilogue or post-book-notes or whatever you want to call them and THAT is where you discover who she is. Personally, I think it would have been cooler if the author had made a bigger deal about The Founder (always un-named) during the book because I apparently completely skipped over the two fairly insignificant references to her and therefore had no idea what the Sabios were talking about at the end. BUT the reveal was still very cool and perhaps the author really did want us to be super confused and re-read the book to try to figure out the connection. *shrug*

Across So Many Seas

Across So Many Seas tells four stories of 12-year-old Jewish girls in the same family line, all living in different locations and times but all experiencing oppression and religious persecution in various forms. I thought for sure one of the stories would be set in Europe in the 1930s since that's the Jewish oppression I'm most familiar with, but none of them were! The first story was set in Spain in 1492 and truth be told: I did not know that the Spanish monarchs expelled all the Jews! They all had to convert to Catholicism, leave the country, or die. 

In fourteen hundred ninety two, 

Spain expelled all of the Jews.

Oh, and Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

The next three stories were of grandma (1923, Turkey), mom (1961, Cuba) and granddaughter (2003, Florida) and were more compelling than the first only because we already knew the family and the backstory when the new story began.

My favorite story was about Alegra - a patriotic 12-year-old Cuban Jewish girl who goes to work as a brigadista during Fidel Castro's rise to power. I didn't know about brigadistas before (so much ignorance) but learned some cool stuff. For instance, as a result of Castro's "literacy campaign," the UN recognized Cuba as a fully literate nation just a year later? And Cuba currently has one of the highest literacy rates in the world - 99.8% approximately? And most of the Cuban volunteers who went to live with farming families and teach them to read in the evenings during the campaign were between the ages of 12 and 18?

Enjoyed the book, learned some stuff. Four stars.