Valentina is Jewish, and is often the victim of the cruelty of the class bully, Oksana. Then one day the sky over their Ukrainian town, Chernobyl, the sky turned red. For the first day, the Russian military said that there was a "fire" at the powerplant, but people in town started to get sick. After three days the evacuation order came. Oksana's father was killed in the initial explosion, and her mother was too sick to be evacuated, so Valentina's mother brought Oksana into her care. They traveled to a nearby town, but were only able to get two tickets to Moscow where Valentina's grandmother lived. The two girls had to go on alone. As they travel alone, and then live in a small flat with Valentina's grandmother, they learn to look past their prejudices and become real friends.
This well written story is more about overcoming prejudice than it is about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The main characters are well drawn and there are a lot of good details about the difficulties of being Jewish in the USSR. That being said, the portrayal of what it was like when the disaster happened are interesting and authentic. The author got a lot of the details about the disaster from a friend who had experienced it. This is a great choice for kids who like to read historical fiction with heroic young characters. (2020, 352 p.)
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