Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, was published in 2015 by Scholastic.
Rating: 4/5
Echo tells the story of three children across a ten-year period: Friedrich, in the time of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany; Mike, in the Great Depression of the 1930s in Pennsylvania; and Ivy, in the time after Pearl Harbor and Executive Order 2033 in California. All three children are tied together by a love for music and by a mysterious harmonica that holds the spirits of three lost princesses searching for a soul to save.
Okay, so that last part is a little strange and mystical, but the whole thing together makes for a beautiful story. I’m not sure whose story I loved more, but I think Mike’s story, with his longing for a family and for someone to love him, is the most heartwrenching. Ryan touches on a lot of things besides music: Hitler, Nazis, Jews, foster homes, the segregation of Mexican children in schools in California, the attitude towards the Japanese…there’s a lot packed into the book, and though it is quite long, the story flies by quickly.
The last part of the book takes place years after all three children’s stories stop, and tells how they are united through music. Because each children’s story ended on a cliffhanger of sorts, the epilogue also backtracks and details what happens afterwards—though that, I think, was my least favorite part because it made everything anticlimactic and the ending felt rushed as a result.
Despite its small flaws, Echo is a beautiful story about music and the connections it can cause between people with separate lives. It won a 2016 Newbery Honor, losing to Last Stop on Market Street, and it boggles my mind as to why (nothing against the latter book—just in my mind, there’s a clear winner, and it’s not the picture book).
Recommended Age Range: 10+
Warnings: None.
Genre: Children’s, Historical Fiction, slight Fantasy
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