Word Out 2014

Moving away from the life you’ve always known is never fun. That’s at least according to fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Bryant, who moves with her family from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Toronto, Ontario, thanks to her father’s job in the military. According to Liz, there’s nothing good about Toronto, and she desperately wishes that she could go back to her old life in Vancouver.
One summer evening, while browsing through the junk at a local garage sale, however, Liz comes across a little wooden soldier doll that immediately piques her interest. After haggling down the price a bit, she decides to give it to her dad as a last-minute birthday gift before he gets shipped off with his regiment to Afghanistan. Little does she realize, but this doll could be a missing and very valuable historical artifact, and the inspiration for a famous World War I poem of the same name.

Interwoven with Liz’s story is that of the doll itself, and how it ended up in Canada. Beginning in 1918, we follow the doll from its origins as a child’s plaything in England, to a source of comfort for a Jewish girl in the Terezín concentration camp in 1944, to belonging to a young American soldier in the jungles of Vietnam during the 1970s, and then to Canada through the aftermath of 9/11. Each time the doll passes from hand to hand, in moments of both hope and sadness.

I really enjoyed reading this book, and liked how the author uses actual historical events to create a place for the doll within the context of world history. When I first finished the book, I found myself leafing back through many of the chapters and re-reading the events that brought the soldier doll into each person's ownership. Although this is a relatively quick read, the stories definitely stayed in my mind and I left wanting to find out more about objects like the book's little soldier doll, things that were passed from person to person in times of war and survived to the present day.

What do you think of Soldier Doll by Jennifer Gold? Let me know.