The Lost Spy and the Green Dress
When Motti and Reuven, age 12, discover that a mysterious stranger has infiltrated their neighborhood, they’re sure that he’s a cunning, cruel spy and they don’t hesitate. They call on their detective skills acquired from adventure books that they love, and together with Aviva, Reuben’s pretty sister, they set out to stop the dangerous enemy. But the mission becomes more and more complicated.
The story takes place in Israel in the mid-1960s, when espionage affairs were rocking the country and setting people’s imaginations afire. But is the lonesome, skinny old man that the kids are following actually a spy? Slowly, another picture begins to emerge, one that is painful and nightmarish. A number of Holocaust survivors live in the neighborhood, and Motti himself is the son of a couple who lived through the Nazi era in Europe. His talkative father wants to talk about his experiences in the concentration camps, but his mother remains silent, bent over her sewing machine all the time. They both want their son to be a regular kid, a Sabra without any complexes. Surprisingly, the youngsters’ adventure deepens awareness of Motti’s family story and how the past affects life in the present.
The story of the “second generation” is told here in a way that it never has before. This is an entertaining, humorous and exciting book whose surprise ending reveals the olds wounds beneath Israeli life.
The Lost Spy and the Green Dress is the first book in a series.
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“The Lost Spy and the Green Dress by Alex Paz-Goldman demonstrates that profound and thought-provoking children’s literature that is also engrossing is sometimes produced here too ... The writer uses a detective-story plot to tell a far deeper tale … Paz-Goldman doesn’t tell a regular story and his manner of telling, as well as his talent, are superior to the run of the mill in this genre … I particularly enjoyed the mesmerizing way in which the writer describes childhood in a Ramat Gan neighborhood in the middle of the 1960s, a description through which he manages to convey an entire era. There’s a lot of courage in Goldman’s narrative technique … Do not miss this book. ”
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“The book is written with skill and humor … Worthwhile.”
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“Some of the children’s books that have appeared recently have been marked with the distinct features of literature that cleaves to the landscape of childhood … One of the best of these is The Lost Spy and the Green Dress … it reads flowingly, intriguingly.”