Margit, Book 4: A Friend in Need.

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

It is 1947, two years after the end of World War II. Canada has finally agreed to open its doors to a group of Jewish orphans from Europe whose parents perished in the Holocaust. Margit has persuaded her parents to adopt a Polish orphan; she is jubilant, and dreams the girl will become a good friend. But Lilly speaks no English. She is distant and scared, clinging desperately to her one possession—a photo of her mother and father. She rejects all Margit’s attempts to befriend her and seems to respond only to Margit’s young brother, Jack. Matters are tense for Margit and her parents. Worse, the time Margit spends trying to help Lilly threatens to jeopardize her relationship with her best friend, Alice, the girl who had befriended her when she first arrived in Toronto. In the end, all turns out well, but not without some traumatic experiences along the way.

Margit is just one of the girls featured in the series Our Canadian Girl, a set of books telling the stories of girls from different places and times in Canadian history. A Friend in Need is the fourth and final book in Kathy Kacer’s simply told stories about the experiences of Margit and her family, starting in Czechoslovakia and continuing in Toronto. Reading the four in sequence will help 8 to 12-year-olds understand more about the experiences of European Jewish families who immigrated here. Recommended.