Summary Of Milkweed By Jerry Spinelli

Imagine being a Gypsy stuck in Poland during the Holocaust and how horrifying it would be. In the book Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, A gypsy boy who does not even know his real name lives on the streets of Warsaw, Poland and smuggles alongside other orphans. He is eventually given the name Misha Pilsudski by a boy who looks out for him, Uri. Misha admires the Jackboots and thinks that they are fighting for him, but he finds out that he is wrong when he gets sent to a ghetto. Misha lives among other innocent people who were targeted and abused by the Jackboots just because of their beliefs. This book really shows the horrors that many children experienced during this tough time and how many of them tried to see light in the darkness. “That’s

The bird-shaped pods had burst and the puffs were spilling out, flying off. I cracked a pod from the stem and blew into the silk-lined hollow, sending the remaining puffs sailing, a snowy shower rising, vanishing into the clouds” (Spinelli 143). The theme of the novel is there is always light in the darkness . This was demonstrated when Misha and Janina experienced seeing a milkweed plant in the ghetto. The milkweed symbolizes hope or the light in the dark and depressing ghetto that they were forced to live in. Plants were very rare to see in ghettos and the fact that they got to see the plant shows that there is hope. Ghettos were very desolate and the only life that was usually there were the people who were still alive. Misha and Janina were very lucky to see the plant and shows how there is always light in the

He just wants to protect Misha and is mean to him just so that he will listen to him. Uri only pushes Misha away to make sure that he is safe and acts almost like an older brother. An example of him pushing him away is when he told him to leave the ghetto, a cold and dirty place, “I don’t know. You don’t want to know. Whatever you do, do not get on a train. Do not be here when the trains come. Justgo. Get out. Run. Don’t stop running.” He looked at the sky. “Ever” (Spinelli 169). Uri wants Misha escape the ghetto so that he is not there when the trains come to take everyone to the concentration camp. Older siblings will usually do anything to make sure that their younger siblings are safe and that is exactly what Uri is doing, especially when he got shot so that Misha would