Broken Birds, The Story of My Momila

I backed your book to honor your true life story. I know like mine, It has taken a lot of energy, strength to accomplish my goal. A look at Bamboo Promise is greatly appreciated.

Backed,
Bamboo Promise

Jeannette, I really like this and I can't believe you have a red arrow already. i'm going to back you because i like your voice and flow and think you deserve to move up the ranks. i'm not sure if the narrative and plot is structured well, because i have not read ebough, but based on the pitch, and the voice and flow of the first two chpaters I will back your book. i have a good tsr so maybe my support will help you out a bit and give you a green arrow. i hope so. i think you have talent. please read some of my book when you have time and let me know what you think. feedback is welcome. cheers, and goodluck


blueboy

(The Age of Rhinstone)

What a story. My heart is still sinking, thinking about you and your family. Very well written, poignant and sad. Thank you for putting it out there for us to see. Your story is all too familiar to those who are/were victims of the Holocaust. What many do not realize are the problems that generations after generations will and do encounter due to the egregiousness of the Holocaust. You are on my WL and will move to shelf after I finish reading another I shelved.
Jane

Jeannette, the fact this is true makes it all the more compelling. It reads beautifully and the narrative is fiction-like. It is emotive and you have a lovely storytelling style. I couldn't stop reading (although I might consider making your font a little larger as it comes up really small on the screen and made it difficult with the larger blocks of text).

That is my only nit-pick.

This is real and raw and tragic and nasty and loving and messy and all those things real families are. You are very brave putting your heart and thoughts and family out on the page like this but you have done these memories justice.

Well done, shelved with pleasure.

Rachael
'Falling Through'

Wow! Your pitch is a grabber and I for one want to read this book. My husband wrote a book on the Holocaust and I really enjoyed the book. Now here's another one and I think I'm going to like reading this book as well. I have it on my WL and I plan on reading chapters 1, 2, 3 before I leave another comment.

i love your writing style and the way you paint such a tranquil scene at the begining of chapter two was well done. i actually could smell the earth and feel the beautiful tranquillity. well done and your book is deserves to be on many shelves not just mine. SHELVED

well done and all the very best with your hard work.

xx
merle

Jeannette, I was captived from the first chapter of your book - i think that your writing flows very naturally and the reader can 't help but lose themselves in they story. It reads like fiction, can't be easy to take such a heartwrenching personal situation and put it on paper in such a way. Really enjoyed it!

Jeannette, This is a heart breaking story. Even with the hell I went through as a child you still sometimes find things that make your heart heavy. I will always feel a certain sadness for those who survived the holocaust and those who came after. I have a deep respect for you for writing this and although I really don't need this kind of competition, I'm glad to be in the same catagory as books written this well. I admire you emensly and wish you all the luck in the world. Kennesaw

Lovely set up. But suggest deleting the "as you will soon see." Don't tell the reader what he/she will see. Let us discover it for ourselves.
Then Steven's power grab hooks us in. Then the back story; a smart order, we care about the writer, and we need more, more, more.
I'm particularly taken by stories of Judaica – yes, I'm Jewish, but there's a mournful sweetness in these particular tales that reaches out and grabs me.
Wishing you all the best with this. It deserves to be read. Shelved, Kimberly

Jeanette,
What a riveting story. Very heart rending. I would mirror the comments of others, in that the narrating seems distant, when it could be so much more gripping if it were told from Channa's own voice.

Shelved
tyler

Broken Birds

Hi Jeanette, You have a unique and melancholic voice here, you are telling such a powerful an interesting story. I am going to back this because it is a tale with such heart-felt ring of honesty and genuineness that it shines through from every paragraph. You are a good writer, but you do yourself a disservice in one respect, why the distant narration of events, the telling. I want to be in these moments, exploring the story as it happened from the protagonists perspective, most likely in a position of close-in third person. For example, the death of the baby with a hole in the heart, you need to tell us that story surely, close up, not from afar, drag us into the terrible drama of that event. I appreciate that this may not be possible for all mini-tales within this epic, but you will have to choose carefully, but I wanted to be shown more than told. I know this is non-fiction, but there is a strong tradition now of narrative history, Tom Holland is perhaps one of the best exponents of this field.

Well done, enjoyed the narrative, just wanted to be closer to the action - best wishes Andrew W.

There is real veracity here. It has been written with feeling and obvious research/inside knowledge. It is also a timely story as the generation directly affected by the war is getting older. There must be ramifications for the next generation and this is something which I have not really seen addressed before. I hope this will be successful and will back it

Broken Birds
This is a wonderful book - a gift not only to those who have suffered similarly, but to those who have not. A number of things mark it out as exceptional among the accounts I have read of the Holocaust and those affected. First, it contains a wealth of specific detail, and as someone who feels passionately that ordinary lives should be recorded for future generations, I salute this achievement; I can imagine the effort and commitment which lies behind such a full and careful record. Secondly, the emphasis is not on the initial atrocities, but on the long aftermath, and you express very poignantly but very matter-of-factly the various ways in which the pain and trauma of events stretches out over generations and sideways across families and communities. I hope very much that this will receive the attention it deserves, and that it will be published and shared in a much bigger arena. It is 'writerly' in all the best senses of the word - a book worth keeping and coming back to. Shelved, and please keep writing.
Katie

This reminded me a little at first of Adelaine Yen Mah’s ‘Falling Leaves’, also a memoir and which also begins with an awkward funeral. It has exactly the same tone as Ms. Yen Mah’s memoir, too: gentle and eloquent.

In ‘Channa Always Hated Strangers’ we’re right into the heart of the story. Not just Channa’s birth but her childhood during Hitler’s first measures against the Jews. We get a very good sense of her “sloppiness” as you put it in your prologue, and also her defiance, when she refuses to wear that yellow star and (almost) to take the animals to the railway station. And then her time as a partisan resistance fighter. You portray all the characters in here very effectively.

This is an important novel dealing with an experience that’s rarely been dealt with: the experience of children of Holocaust sufferers and how he Holocaust impacted on them. It’s an interesting topic in its own right.

Bookshelved.

Bren Verrill
The Weird Problem of Good.

this is a touching piece. It reads like fiction. You should bill it as such and then spring it on your audience later.

The introduction set the tone to perfection. And what a fantastic beginning you have in two sides.

It's not only your prose that is fantastic - your cover and pitch are too.

On my shelf. Tons of luck with this.

Joanna

Hi Jeanette,

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. Your book is beautiful. It reads like fiction, you're an excellent writer; that it's non-fiction is touching. I'm liking it very much. Best of luck to you.

Hi Jeanette, what a storyteller. No time for reader to slow down. This book is about strength of a family and presents hope - there are many children. And they present writings and works of art. Thank you for reminding us of power of storytelling. Shelved. Keiko

Hello again, Jeanette!

I have been humbled by the history of your family. So often I take things for granted... my rights, my family's presence in my life, my feeling of security. I suppose that makes me spoiled.

I appreciate the time, dedication and, perhaps, the pain that went into writing your story. I will most certainly back this book. And I hope to find the time to read further, as well.

I do suggest you have someone do a quick edit for you. Nothing glaring, and the mistakes I spotted were little things we ALL do. (One example: 'years past' in that circumstance should have been 'years passed'. Like I said...no big deal! Would that mine looked as good... I can't even get through one of these simple reviews without two or three typos! Ha!

My best wishes to you in your writing endeavors. Good luck with the children's stories, too. :o)

Karen

This is absolutely fascinating and sad. As a child of a first generation American Jew, whose family is from Eastern European descent this story holds many emotions within it that I can identify with. There is a dynamic between siblings that is rare and painful and yet strangely beautiful in its complexity. The writing of this is neither overdone nor too simply written. It is clean and easy to follow. I'm shelving this. It's truly wonderful.

I recommend you to check out the book, Paper Boats. It's excellent and another true story.

Wishing you the best with this.
Rachel May

P.S. Thank you so much for reading my book. I appreciate it so much.

Hi Jeanette,

I've just started your story, and like it very much. I will read on and comment in a while, but I wondered if I might point something out to you, now, before more readers peruse your bio?

Since pitches are very important, I think perhaps you should re-work yours a bit. I'm not sure that a capital letter should come after a semi-colon. Either use a period, or change the 'E' in 'Every' to a lower case. And then, you have a question and a statement in the same sentence. Rewriting a bit of punctuation would make the short pitch a much more professional-looking read. And we all want to impress agents and publishers, right? As fantastic as that concept sometimes seems! :o)

Just a suggestion, friend! I'll be back with you after my chores are caught up! Ta.

Karen

Hi there,
This is a compelling read, the way you portray your family and your situation is powerfully done. You show us how easy it is for harm to be done, almost with out realising it. The fact that this is true-life makes it all the more heart-breaking. You write well, wonderful description of your family life and the tension. Everyone should read this, it's made me think. I'm not going to nit-pick the technical stuff as I don't feel qualified, suffice to say, I liked this.
SHELVED!
Bests,
AnnabelleP
(Adelaide Short)

Hmmm. Curious. On my WL.

Best,
Martin.

Dear Jeanette,



Nice to come across non-fiction for a change. I checked my dictionary for Momila but found nothing. A term of endearment?

Also Googled it but only found blogs where the owners seemed to have adopted the term for themselves. Faith, my wife, grew up in a Jewish neighbourhood and used to attend Jewish religious instruction with her friends, but hadn’t heard the term either.

I’m curious now and will have to find out.

Faultless writing. Your opening chapter has me concerned. Is this going to be a family battle?

Your writing is almost lyrical. The saddest thing on earth is for a child to die. Wiping my eyes.

Now I’m chuckling about the Mezuzahs. My mother who was supposed to be Church of England, nailed a Mezuzah on our front door frame for extra protection. How about that?

Heart-wrenching to be taken back into those years. A lot of people are going to want to read this history.

Having read all you uploaded, Broken Birds – The Story of My Momila is on my bookshelf.

I know who might like to read this. Go to the Home Page. There are five books with gold stars under Previous Selections. One is Going Twice by Rachel May Wilson. Click on her name and leave a message in her message box for a swap read.

Also, perhaps is Ainwonderland who wrote After the Fire Burns. You might ‘search’ for her and her book. I always tease her that she is Anne Thumbs-Up. If you see her avatar, you will know why.

Go well with your writing,


Kind regards,



Pierre

The Little Girl in the Fig Tree

Hurray I am the first to get here. I love your story. It is wonderful and sad and so worth the telling. I am hoping you will soon add more.
Barbara
(The Sea Pillow)