Award Winner: What I Saw and How I Lied

What I saw and How I Lied

Book review
Kelsey

Blundell, J. (2008). What I Saw and How I Lied. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.

          The book, What I Saw and How I Lied takes place in post-World War II America. The story follows a young girl who is growing into a young woman. The girl goes by Evie and finds herself faced with a difficult choice because of choices made by her mother and stepfather. As the story unfolds Evie slowly loses her young and innocent perspective of the world and begins to truly see people in her life for what they are. Evie travels to Florida with her family for a vacation, she later finds out that the reason they left was to run from the horrible things her step father had done during the war. Trouble follows them down the coast and the man who is blackmailing her step-father also seduces her mother. Evie’s naïve mentality encourages her to believe that the man is actually interested in her. Ultimately her step-father and mother take a boat out on the water with the man as a hurricane is approaching. The evidence compels you to believe that her parents killed the man out at sea, but Evie finds herself telling lies to save her parent’s lives.

The story was a captivating one that was hard to put down. Throughout the story, as the reader, I was able to put together what was going on ahead of the character who was living it. Evie was such a naïve character who tried to see the good in everyone throughout the story.

In most stories it is justice that prevails, but not in this story. We are confident by the end of the story that her parents were guilty, but Evie twists the events to help her parents, and the surprise to the reader is that she got away with it. A part of the story that I was particularly fond of was her new perspective on how to treat Jewish people and what they had been through. Her ability to go back and give the money stolen by her stepfather to Mrs. Grayson and to befriend the Jewish girl instead of staying friends with Margie who treated others so poorly. Evie learned a great deal about what to value in people and the kind of woman she wanted to be in the story. Although justice was not entirely served in the story, I do feel like there were valuable lessons within the story for a young girl to learn. Growing up is often hard and forces you to make impossible decisions and sometimes the people you care about can let you down the most. I think this book holds a great deal of value in understanding very complex human emotions and how those emotions can impact others.

More Resources
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005129

http://www.glovesoff.org/features/gjamerica_1.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/0524_AmbroseQA.html