Sonia Levitin survived a difficult childhood to thrive as an award-winning children's author whose books treat difficult questions of faith and morality. Born to Jewish parents in 1934 amid the anti-S...
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Critical Essay by Terry M. Cole
A very moving though never maudlin story with good characterization and a fast pace, [Journey to America] will be a definite asset to any collection. Young Lisa Platt ...
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Critical Essay by Robert Unsworth
Levitin's wacky story [The Mark of Conte] will appeal to any students who have ever been hassled by a school computer…. Every character is a caricature...
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Critical Essay by Zena Sutherland
[The Mark of Conte] is a spoof, of course, but it's a spoof just this side of reality, because all of the daft, hilarious things that happen and the people in...
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Critical Essay by Barbara Elleman
[The] extrasensory perceptions that Daria has always known she's had develop into a psychic ability to communicate with her long-dead grandmother [in Beyond A...
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Critical Essay by Sally Holmes Holtze
The treatment of psychic phenomena [in Beyond Another Door] is never heavy-handed but is used as an effective device enabling the author to explore the relations...
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Critical Essay by George Gleason
[The No-Return Trail] is told from the viewpoint of Nancy Kelsey…. Unfortunately, what should be rattling good historical fiction comes off as only modestly in...
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Critical Essay by Denise M. Wilms
Rigors of the trail are the storytelling mainstay for Levitin's re-creation of the Bidwell—Bartleson expedition [in The No-Return Trail]…. The r...
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Critical Essay by Tony Siaulys
An historical event interlaced with a fictional account of what might have happened is a popular and advantageous way of creating interest in a subject for all readers ...
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Critical Essay by Elizabeth Minot Graves
A Jewish girl tells the story of her family's escape from Nazi Germany [in Journey to America]…. This warm, moving story of kindness and courage...
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Critical Essay by Gloria Levitas
"Journey to America" describes the [Platt family's] escape from Nazi Germany in direct, unsentimental prose.
The author briefly sketches the h...
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Critical Essay by Zena Sutherland
Lisa's experiences at a refugee camp for children and her happier time staying with a Catholic family [in Journey to America] are vivid and poignant. This rea...
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Critical Essay by Beryl Reid
The bare outline of facts about the lost colony of Roanoke is familiar. In this substantial, well-researched novel [Roanoke: A Novel of the Lost Colony] the facts are spu...
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Critical Essay by Zena Sutherland
The realistic background [in Jason and the Money Tree] is convincing, the writing style and dialogue acceptable, but the fantasy and realism don't mesh, and t...
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Critical Essay by Elizabeth A. Marafino
Although Levitin throws a monkey wrench into this entertaining fantasy [Jason and the Money Tree] with a confusing discussion of dollar devaluation and the mec...
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Critical Essay by John Ives
The strength of Sonia Levitin's story [in Jason and the Money Tree] lies in the way in which she realistically works out the unforeseen complications which being th...
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Sonia Levitin
Critical Essay by Terry M. Cole
