Milkweed is a 2003 young adult historical fiction novel by American author Jerry Spinelli.
The book is about a boy in Warsaw, Poland in the years of World War II during the Holocaust.
Published in 2003, the novel became a popular young adult work used by English teachers to facilitate a discussion of the Holocaust.
Readers are immersed in the experiences of a child who does not fully comprehend what is happening around him in the Warsaw Ghetto.
[3] While out stealing with Uri, Misha witnesses German invaders “Jackboots” capture Poland.
[5] This fabricated background states that Misha is a Gypsy born in Russia to a large and old family.
His mother was a talented fortune teller, he had “seven brothers and five sisters,” and a beloved “speckled mare” named Greta.
[6] In this story, bombs and hateful Polish farmers separate Misha’s family until he winds up as an orphan in Warsaw.
[8] City conditions worsen with low food supplies, people lose their houses including Janina and her family, loss of electricity, and Jews are being harshly prosecuted.
[9] Eventually all Jewish people in Warsaw including Misha, Janina, and the gang of boys are moved into the ghetto.
Uri, who has been gone for a long time, warns Misha that deportations are coming, and that all of the people will be cleared out of the ghetto.
Janina runs in desperation to find her father, and Misha loses sight of her in the crowd of people.
Misha is hit with a club, and kicked before Uri, who appears to be a Jackboot, shoots him in the ear, taking the rest of it off.
A farmer finds him and takes him to a farm where Misha stays for three years working and sleeping in a barn with the animals and eventually runs away.
Not knowing what to do next, he rides on trains and ends up back in Warsaw where there is rubble and he then removes his armband leaving it on the sidewalk.
Misha returns to the countryside, continuously stealing and even drags his own little cart filled with the things he stole.
The problems were [his] size ([he] had stopped growing at five feet, one inch), [his] accent, and [his] missing ear which now looked like a clump of cauliflower.
She marries him but she gets tired of Jack's (Misha's) strange and weird acts so she decided to leave after five months while being pregnant.
"Then one day in Philadelphia, in the shadow of City Hall two women stopped and listened... After a while one of them reached out her hand and cupped [his] ear clump.
Many years pass, and we find Jack working in a Bag ‘n Go market when his daughter and granddaughter walk in.
Katherine asks him to give Wendy her middle name, which she had left blank for him to fill.
Misha - Main Character “a little child of indeterminate age and background” is a small, short orphan boy who survives by using his size and quickness to steal food and escape danger.
[16] Ferdi is an orphan boy who Misha calls the “smoke-blowing Ferdi.”[17] When asked questions “[his] answers [are] never long .
He is a pharmacist who makes medicine, but he stops working a formal job after restrictions are put on Jews.
Janina Milgrom is a small young girl who gets frustrated, upset, mad, and pushy frequently throughout the novel.
Vivian is a “normal, sensible person” who enjoys Misha’s mad sounding talk of his past.
She calls Misha “Poppynoodle.” Herr Himmler is a head Jackboot who has “half a little black mustache .
[25] In an interview Jerry Spinelli said he feels one of his earliest memories are of looking at pictures of the Holocaust.
Once he decided to proceed in writing a novel concentrated on the Holocaust, personal accounts like Elie Wiesel's memoirs gave Spinelli insight.
In The Horn Book Magazine Peter D. noted that “[the] angel statue and [the] milkweed plant that somehow grows in the ghetto,” were a few of the novel’s motifs.