Between Shades of Gray
By Darienne Stewart,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Harrowing, moving account of life in Stalin's labor camps.
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What you will—and won't—find in this book.
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Based on 17 parent reviews
Excellent Book for Students!
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What's the Story?
In the summer of 1941, 15-year-old Lina, her younger brother, and their mother are abruptly forced from their Lithuanian home by the Soviets and deported to a Siberian labor camp. Their father has already been arrested and sent to prison. The long train journey is horrifying, and there's little comfort upon arrival: Violence and death stalk the prisoners. Lina begins to build a friendship, and then a romance, with Andrius, a fellow prisoner. A talented artist, Lina records her experience in drawings, kept hidden from cruel guards, as she struggles to keep her faith in humanity and her hope for any future.
Is It Any Good?
This is a moving fictional story of extraordinary loss that nevertheless thrums with hope. Author Ruta Sepetys, the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee, based BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY on the stories of survivors she met while researching the deportation of Lithuanians under Stalin. Sepetys uses a light touch when describing the cruelty and violence suffered by Lina and her fellow travelers: These passages are brief and to the point, which make them all the more heartbreaking.
The horrors Sepetys describes are staggering, but it's an effective and sensitive way to bring history to life. Readers will readily identify with Lina, who's abruptly ripped out of her comfortable life. It's impossible to read Between Shades of Gray and not think about how you'd cope in her situation. At the book's end, readers may want to learn more about what happened in the Baltics.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about parallels between this story and accounts by Holocaust survivors. Why is the story of the Baltics so much less familiar to people in the West?
There's a great deal of misery in Between Shades of Gray and other stories of government oppression, such as the Holocaust. How do you feel after reading these stories -- anxious, hopeful, distressed, optimistic? What's the purpose of these stories?
Lina records her story in artwork and cryptic drawings intended as messages to her father. Talk about other examples of artwork as storytelling.
Book Details
- Author: Ruta Sepetys
- Genre: Historical Fiction
- Topics: Friendship, History
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Philomel
- Publication date: March 22, 2011
- Number of pages: 344
- Last updated: January 15, 2019
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