![\"book](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-ieNzFK3doZs\/TzFJcS2zpVI\/AAAAAAAAHZQ\/IU9HBgktP8w\/s200\/Apothecary.jpg?resize=125%2C187\")
Moving is often difficult,\nbut having to leave your home because your own government is spying on you?<\/p>\n
Moving is often difficult,
\nbut having to leave your home because your own government is spying on you?<\/p>\n
After World War II, the US government did not take the threat of Communism lightly, as the Cold War<\/a> kept American and Soviet nuclear missiles always at the ready. So influential people who might be liberals or Communist sympathizers were watched, regardless of their fame. People in the entertainment industry with humanitarian ideals could find themselves on the Hollywood Blacklist<\/a> and never allowed to work in movies again.<\/p>\n It’s no wonder that Janie’s parents decided they’d rather be in England than be forced to testify against their friends<\/a> before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.<\/p>\n Against the threat of open nuclear warfare, what good is an old book of spells and potions? It’s the only hope that Benjamin and Janie have as they race to save the world. Book info<\/b>: The Apothecary \/ Maile Meloy; illustrated by Ian Schoenherr. G.P.Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2011. [author’s website<\/a>] [illustrator’s blog<\/a>] [publisher site<\/a>] [book trailer<\/a>] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.<\/p>\n My Recommendation<\/b>: Janie wasn\u2019t happy about moving from Hollywood to England in the middle of 9th grade, but her family was being spied on \u2013 by US agents! Her parents were just movie script writers, believing that more people should have a chance at a better life, now that they all survived World War II.<\/p>\n As the Cold War deepened in 1952, anyone thought to have Communist ideas was suspect and could be \u201cblacklisted\u201d and kept from working, especially in the entertainment industry. So it\u2019s off to London to work on a BBC television series under assumed names, away from orange trees and sunny beaches to gloomy skies and war-scarred city buildings.<\/p>\n Her new school is awful \u2013 uniforms and Latin and medieval history. Everyone huddles up with their friends except Benjamin, who lives with his father at the apothecary shop near her apartment and Sergei, whose father works at the Soviet Embassy.<\/p>\n When Benjamin\u2019s father receives a note that a Chinese chemist has been captured, he scarcely has time to hide Benjamin and Janie and an old book in a secret room before the shop is invaded and he is kidnapped! Notes in the Pharmacopoeia lead them to a special herbal garden, to an old man who can read its Latin and Greek instructions for strange elixirs and warnings about risky transformations, like the tincture that allows a human to change into a bird and back again.<\/p>\n But the teens can\u2019t stay in the garden – whoever took Benjamin\u2019s father wants the Pharmacopoeia and won\u2019t rest until they have it. On the run, arrested and questioned, Janie and Benjamin must escape again and again. Who can they trust? Their rich schoolmate Sarah? Mr. Danby, their Latin teacher and former prisoner-of-war? Sergei and his father?<\/p>\n
\n**kmm<\/p>\n