Ksenia Barysheva, 15

Read in Russian

Echo, by American writer Pam Muñoz Ryan, consists of three different stories and, at first glance, it seems that circumstances will tear the heroes of each story apart. There’s Friedrich and his sister Elisabeth, Michael and his brother Franklin, Ivy and her friend Susan.

The first story takes place in Germany in the early 1930s. After a year at a nursing school in Stuttgart, Elisabeth must now return home to her father and brother in Trossingen, where she will complete three months of training with their family physician, Dr. Braun. Friedrich can’t wait to have his sister back home, so they can resume their musical evenings, with their father on the cello, Elisabeth playing piano, Uncle Gunter on accordion and Friedrich on his harmonica, with its mysterious letter M on it. It turns out, however, that the year away has seriously changed his sister’s views. Elisabeth has joined the League of German Girls and supports Hitler’s ideas about the purity of the Aryan race.

Friedrich is preparing to apply to conservatory, but he doesn’t attend school, because the other children tease him cruelly for the huge birthmark on his face. Workers at the harmonica factory, where, as a minor, Friedrich is allowed to work half days, help him keep up with schoolwork. Unexpectedly, his sister Elisabeth starts to insist that he comply with the German pure race laws and undergo an operation so he is not able to have children and pass on his physical “deformity.” Friedrich can’t understand what is happening to the person he was closest to. After all, it was Elisabeth who became like a mother to him when their mother died so many years ago, and it was she who had always protected him from bullying and cruel strangers.

After less than a week at home, Elisabeth goes back to Stuttgart, where she believes it will be easier to make a career in the National Socialist party. Friedrich thinks she’s gone for good. In spite of their disagreements, their father continues to write her letters every day, reminding her of her childhood, their musical evenings at home, daily life in Trossingen. No matter what, Elisabeth will always be his daughter.

And so it goes until, one day, Nazis knock on the door of the house…

The heroes of the second story live in the United States in the mid-1930s. After the death of their parents, brothers Michael and Franklin end up at a boys’ home. It’s only attraction is an old, out-of-tune piano. In order to stay with his younger brother, Mike tries desperately to get into a harmonica band. He carefully selects a repertoire and learns to improvise. Little Frankie has a much better chance at getting adopted than teenage Mike and the director of the orphanage is ready to send Mike to work on a farm and separate the brothers. But then fate gives them a chance to stay together.  A representative for the talented pianist Mrs. Sturbridge shows up at the orphanage, looking for a musically gifted child. When he hears Mike playing the old instrument, he decides to adopt both of the boys. The brothers end up in a fancy house. Frankie genuinely admires his adoptive mother and wants her to love him. But Mrs. Sturbridge remains strangely cold.

Mike learns that Mrs. Sturbridge may have had other reasons for taking them in: adopting at least one child was her father’s condition to claiming her inheritance. When her own three-year-old son drowned, she quit playing piano or performing at concerts, shut herself away in her house, and retreated from society. Her father had hoped that another child would bring back her zest for life, but no child can replace her lost son. Mike steels himself for an open talk with his adoptive mother. If she can’t accept them, he’s willing to leave, but he asks that Frankie stay with her. The younger brother has already gotten attached to her and suffers from her indifference. Mrs. Sturbridge hears him out and Mike thinks she’s understood. Then, some time later, he sees documents that are meant to annul the adoption. To make sure Frankie doesn't end up back at the boys’ home, Mike decides to run away with him and try out for a children’s harmonica band which accepts homeless kids who pass the audition.

The third story in the book takes place in the US during World War II. Fifth-grader Ivy has just been invited to play the solo at a harmonica ensemble contest to be recorded for radio, but her family must pack up and move to another state. Her father has been offered a good job in another state, where he’ll be supervisor of a farm. The farm had belonged to a Japanese family, but after Pearl Harbor, Japanese families in the US were all sent to internment camps and their property was temporarily given over to Americans. So Ivy parts with her dream and her friends, and heads to California.

Ivy meets Susan, her neighbor who’s her age, and gets ready to start at a new school. She learns that in California children from Mexican families like hers must attend special schools, where they follow a simplified school program for “Americanization.” Susan goes to the regular school and Ivy is hurt that her new friend never warned her that they wouldn’t be able to attend school together. Soon, though, a small orchestra forms in Susan’s school, and the girls can participate together.

Ivy and her mom set about fixing up the farm. They plant flowers and paint the walls that get vandalized over and over with slurs directed at the previous owners, the Yamamoto family. Susan Ward’s brother, Donald, died at Pearl Harbor, and now their father can’t forgive Kenny Yamamoto, son of the farm’s owners, for having talked him into joining the marines with him. Mr. Ward believes the Yamamotos are Japanese spies and that there’s a hidden closet in the house with secret documents. Ivy decides to investigate. She opens a door in the back of the closet, but inside she finds only the family’s musical instruments and happy family photographs.

At the time, many Americans hoped that the Japanese would never return to their farms and they would be able to buy them up for pennies. Ivy’s family does everything in their power to keep the property safe for its owners. When Kenny Yamamoto, still serving in the US army, returns to the farm on leave, Ivy gifts him the most precious thing she has—her harmonica.

The heroes of each story face circumstances that seek to divide them: politics, grief, ethnicity. But Elisabeth helps Friedrich rescue their father from the so-called “labor” camp, where he was sent for his political views. Mrs. Sturbridge adopts Mike and Frankie. The harmonica Ivy gifts Kenny Yamamoto ends up saving his life.

Several years later, on the stage of Carnegie Hall, orchestra conductor Friedrich meets invited pianist Michael and young flute-player Ivy. None of them know that each of them learned to play on a harmonica with an unusually deep sound that seemed to bring together the voices of different musical instruments. The harmonica with an M on its side.

As with all unique musical instruments, this harmonica has a beautiful ancient legend behind it. Pam Muñoz Ryan reveals it to her readers, but it remains a mystery to her characters.

Echo shows us how there is much more that unites us than divides us, including coincidences we may not even suspect. We just need to remember that and, like Friedrich and Elisabeth’s father, try every day to preserve the invisible ties that bind us together.

Eva Biryukova, 16

Read in Russian

Sometimes a book, much like a person, waits patiently until you start the conversation. Echo spent a long time on my bookshelf, waiting for its turn. I recently discovered it there—and it was perfect timing.

The three parts of this book tell the life stories of characters that appear, at first glance, completely different. They’re tied together by a fairytale which takes place fifty years before the end of World War II. A little boy named Otto buys a strange book and becomes its hero. When the story comes to life, he meets three sister princesses in the forest and is magically transported back to his village. A harmonica shows him the way, and later connects his fate to those of the later characters. The instrument serves as a messenger that everything in life can turn out for the better.

The three parts of the story take place in the 1930s, on the eve of the Second World War.

Friedrich lost his mother years ago, and now there’s a rift in the family, because his older sister has chosen the ideology of fascism, while Friedrich and their father can’t accept her new ideas. At the time, most young people in Germany wanted to join youth organizations like the League of German Girls or the Hitler Youth. To do so, they would have to prove the purity of their ethnic origins—you weren’t allowed to have more than an eighth of any other blood. Young people had to show their birth certificates and their parents’ and grandparents’ marriage certificates.

Even among so-called “pure”  Germans, Hitler’s followers tried to root out people who might pass on what they saw as “flawed” traits. Such people were to have an operation to prevent them from having children. Young Friedrich has a huge birthmark covering half his face and classmates call him “Monster Boy.” His father understands that Friedrich may be forced to undergo an operation that could very well kill him.

Friedrich has the potential to become a talented musician: he sees and feels music in everything—in the motion of the wind, in the dance of snowflakes. At times like these, the boy can barely control himself and he waves his arms, as though he were conducting an orchestra. People think he’s a ugly fool. He finds a harmonica with a small mysterious M on the side, and the little instrument helps him in his hardest moments.

Music lends Friedrich confidence and the boy resolves to save his father from the Dachau labor camp for political prisoners, where the fascist send Germans, who don’t agree with the rules of the new regime.

This first part of the book leaves the reader confused. The plot breaks off so abruptly, you want to cry. What’s left to hope for? What will happen to Friedrich after he gets held up on the train heading to Dachau, hoping to bail out his father?

The second part tells the story of two brothers who end up in an orphanage. Their grandmother promised them that one day they would find a happy home with a good person and in the meantime, they must help each other. It’s clear, however, that finding a parent that will adopt the two children together is very unlikely. The brothers love music and play piano together. (Their grandma had chosen that orphanage precisely because it had a piano.) The kitchen cooks who listened to them play stealthily wipe away tears. The music is so full of life, feeling, pain, and hope!

Even when the boys get adopted, it’s not yet clear if all will be well.

One day, they walk into a musical instrument store and buy themselves harmonicas. The elder brother, Mike, chooses a harmonica that seems somehow special, as though it were the one choosing him. A harmonica with a tiny letter M on the edge.

Will the brothers manage to stay together? Again, the author leaves you hanging: the story breaks off just as Mike finds the papers confirming that their adoption is to be annulled.

The heroine of the third part is a girl named Ivy, living in the US. Her school teacher shows her students how to play the harmonica. Ivy gets a harmonica with a strange letter M. Its sound, almost like a voice, is different from that of the rest. Music becomes Ivy’s friend and helper and it’s there for her when she has to move away from her best friend and say goodbye to her brother as he heads off to war.

But Ivy finds out that there are things much worse than moving from the city where she’d finally found a friend and a teacher that believed in her and her musical abilities. The Japanese-American Yamamoto family was sent away from their own house and into an internment camp. Families like theirs had only hours to pack and could take only what they could carry with them. And Ivy’s new friend Susan Ward lost her brother in the war. Why did people like the Yamamotos and the Wards, who were friends and neighbors before the war, suddenly become enemies and stop trusting each other?

Ivy finds a hidden door in the Yamamotos’ house, a door which leads to a room where Japanese families managed to hide what was most valuable—musical instruments. Once again, music helps the heroine. Ivy understands that she must persevere and help her parents. She senses who most needs her help and support and finds the strength to aid Susan and her father. She even parts with her most prized possession—the harmonica.

Once again, the story breaks off on a cliff-hanger: the postman who once brought Susan the telegram about her brother’s death is heading for Ivy’s house. What news awaits Ivy’s family?

I’ll admit that by the fourth part, I was so anxious, I could barely hold back tears when I understood that all the plot lines would cross in New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1951.

“Everyone needs a little beauty and light in their lives, especially during the worst of times” says the director of Ivy’s school orchestra. These words are so touching and important, especially in our day and age.

I’d like to learn to play the harmonica and maybe one day I’ll be able to play some of the music from these stories.

Translated from the Russian by Alisa Cherkasova
Book cover: pammunozryan.com

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