This book did an excellent job showing some of the dangers the orphans would have been exposed to. Now when I read this book as an adult I tried to think if I could adopt an unknown orphan from the city. As a child, when I read a book about this period, I would imagine myself as an orphan. I have always been fascinated by the orphan train period. The biggest message of my review is for people to try looking past the cover and give this book a shot (or, if you can't look past the cover, go pick up a paperback copy). This cover was forbidding enough that my sister-in-law mentioned it after just glancing at it while visiting yesterday. Um, I guess I won't read this book.' Thankfully the paperback chose a different picture. Sadly a casual reader will look at Rodzina's 'stink-eye' and say, 'oh. Now that I've read it I understand why this picture is accurate and why it is a descriptive picture for this story and characters. It seems like Rodzina is giving the reader her 'stink eye' and just daring us to read her book. There is something extremely forbidding about this book cover. Previously when I would think about reading 'Rodzina' I had more time to look at the cover and decide. I was in a hurry at my library, and I grabbed three books from my to-read list and I checked them out. I realized why when I finally checked it out. I have had this book on my reading list for a while and I've kept putting off reading it. Despite all these three points I don't think this cover choice was a good one. Third, if covers have a picture of the characters they should do their best to make the picture of the character look like how the character is described in the book (no blond skinny girls when there is a plump black hair girl.). Second, I admit this is what I imagine Rodzina looked like at the beginning of the book (her features were the same at the end, but her expression was probably a lot different).

I can tell she read this book and thought a lot about Rodzina and what she would possibly look like.

First of all I really like Trina Schart Hyman. I am not one who usually makes a big deal about what the cover of a book has (though my graphic designer husband says everyone judges books by their cover even if they don't know they are doing it). I'm afraid the first thing I need to start with is the cover.

Rodzina by karen cushman