My Name is Hamburger is a verse novel. Jacqueline Jules packs a lot into this short book - Jewish culture, discrimination, hopes and wishes, friendship complications, bullies, belonging, making new friends, Holocaust survivors, school life and family life.
The year is 1962 and Trudie's parents are holocaust survivors and Jewish. Her father owns a printing business and her mother stays home to look after her new prematurely born baby brother.
I like how my family sit at our round table
just eating a tasty food, not a last name
I wish didn't go with my first.
Trudie has a very special friend who lives nearby named Lila. They have been friends since they were babies. Trudie excels at spelling and so as this story opens she is competing in her school level competition. Trudie is in grade four. She and her dad have been studying hard for this. She spells homogenous and makes it to the final round of two contestants but then the judge gives her a word with a silent letter - rhythm.
Like a gherkin.
That little green pickle
Kids like to crunch
This gives rise to more dreadful teasing by one horrid boy in her class - Daniel Reynolds. Trudie is so disappointed about the spelling bee but there is the hope she can compete again next year - she did make it through five rounds. I loved the way her teacher celebrates her achievement.
School should be a happy place for Trudie but every week there is the problem of the music class. Trudi cannot sing the Christian songs and so she spends her time in the library. She loves being with the librarian Mrs Nolan, doing tasks like shelving books from A to Z. It is lucky because Trudi loves to read and she is getting close to the target on fifty books on the class reading chart. She didn't win the spelling bee perhaps she can win the reading trophy. Then a new boy arrives. He is also subjected to racial taunts because he is thought to be 'Chinese'. In fact he was born in the US.
Meanwhile Lila seems to have found a new friend. A pretty and popular girl named Sue Ellen. Young modern readers might be shocked when they read that Trudie cannot be invited to Sue Ellen's birthday party because as a Jewish child and so she is not allowed into the Colburn Country Club. The new boy, Jerry Braswell, who lives next door also used to be her friend but then he joined up with Daniel Reynolds. They taunt the girls and one day they throw water bombs at them on their way home:
Only red balloons, scattered
in little pieces all over the street
along with my trust
in mothers who understand
Trudie loves doing things with her father. Her mother is always distracted by the baby. They decide to plant a cherry tree in their garden but then Trudie comes home one day and the little plant has been destroyed. Not long after this her father has a dreadful accident and he can no longer work.
Her father does not tell Trudie much about the holocaust but he does offer some wisdom:
"He says 'hate' starts with separation and grows bigger, until it turns to stones angry people throw through windows. ... Daddy doesn't like the way I say that word 'different'. Doesn't like when it pulls people apart, puts some on a pedestal and others in the dirt."
"In my life ... I've seen people turn their backs when others suffer. But today ... true neighbours show me the best of what people can be."
Bookseller blurb: Trudie Hamburger is the only Jewish kid living in the small southern town of Colburn in 1962. Nobody else at her school has a father who speaks with a German accent or a last name that means chopped meat. Trudie doesn't want to be the girl who cries when Daniel Reynolds teases her. Or the girl who hides in the library to avoid singing Christian songs in music class. She doesn't want to be different. But over the course of a few pivotal months, as Trudie confronts her fears and embraces what she loves--including things that make her different from her classmates--she finally finds a way to say her name with pride.
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