Echo

Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Echo follows three characters, Friedrich, Mike, and Ivy, who live in different parts of the world in the years before and during World War II. Framing their stories is a fairytale about the sisters Ein, Zwei, and Drei, who are cursed by a witch and who give a boy named Otto a harmonica that ends up finding its way around the world, with Friedrich, Mike, and…

Echo is a novel about several young characters who learn about what bigotry looks like, struggle with it in their own lives, and ultimately find a way to acknowledge the shared humanity of those who look, think, or act differently from them. Friedrich has always been an outcast, but it’s only when the Nazis start to take power in his home country of Germany that Friedrich realizes their bigotry goes beyond the schoolyard bullying he’s…

Each of the three interconnected stories in Echo explores how children relate to adults, whether that adult is a parent or an unrelated mentor. Friedrich is close to his father, Mr. Schmidt, and although he wants to be like him, he struggles to understand why his father keeps writing letters to Friedrich’s sister Elisabeth after she becomes a Nazi and abandons the family. Through his father’s example, Friedrich learns that being a good parent…