A review by thedisabledreader
Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan

challenging emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Packed into a classic upper middle grade, three full stories covering issues and centering perspectives rarely discussed in a respectful light are fully developed, and each area covered is given its space and time to be properly addressed. The audience is trusted to handle the story with care due to the obvious effort that the author put into the development and research of it.

Her dedication to good representation was especially apparent throughout the first kid’s perspective. The history of the Holocaust often ignores the terrors that disabled people experienced as well as other minorities groups, so the portrayal of the complexities of the time period as well as the often ignored crimes is an important subject to bring to kids, especially in the target age range. 

The first story as well as the others do not have the opportunity to explore the emotions to the extent it should have considering the topics. It still developed the context of the stories, fictional and historical, to an appropriate and accurate extent, so it is a solid basis for middle grade readers to be introduced to or to further their knowledge on young kids in big situations.

Although I personally found the stories of varying intrigue, they are all written with solid foundations from a story building and character development perspective, so I appreciated reading them even if they were not necessarily my forte. It also helped that each subsection of the narratives had distinctive voices while still connecting all the characters together through themes and their values. 

The ending collision of the plots fit every character and story into a place that I was happy with leaving the characters as they were despite it not being necessarily realistic for their situations (especially considering the context of the Holocaust). It was a solid conclusion for the characters and their themes, and it was nice to read an ending to a heavy subject book thinking that their lives were still extending beyond what was shown.
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