Newbery Medalist Sid Fleischman's books are mostly humor and tall tales, but this fantasy is very serious. World War II veteran and incompetent ventriloquist "The Great Freddie" is possessed by a dybbuk, the ghost of a Jewish child killed by Nazis in the Holocaust. Avrom Amos has one goal: to find and kill the Nazi officer who shot him to death and poisoned his sister. While the ghost of Avrom Amos much improves Freddie's nightclub act by speaking through his dummy, he also forces Freddie to behave like an Orthodox Jew while he searches for his villain. Like all Fleischman's books, this is very well-written, but I think it is more for adults and teenagers than most of the author's other titles.

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