Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen

It's February 1942 and Meg Kenyon, 12, is living on her Grandmère's farm with her French mother in Nazi occupied France. She hasn't seen her English-born dad since he left in May 1940 after receiving a telegram from London and Meg believes he has been imprisoned by the Nazis, if he is even still alive. Before he left, he created a jar full of coded messages for her to solve - deciphering each other's coded messages was something they both enjoyed doing. Now, however, there was only one message left and Meg has been putting off solving it. 

Meg has also been selling some of the vegetables from Grandmère's farm on the black market while secretly working for the resistance. When she unscrambles a message from them that reads Follow the German, Meg knows just who that is - newly arrived Lieutenant Becker, friendly upfront, cold-blooded underneath. And unfortunately, he now knows Meg's face now, after he figures out she was following him.

But Lieutenant Becker is temporarily forgotten about when Meg gets home and finds a badly wounded British officer, Captain Henry Stewart, in the barn, who claims to know Meg's father. After much sneaking around to help Captain Stewart, it turns out that he was on a rescue mission which he can no longer carry out. That's not all Meg discovers - it seems her mother has been working as a secret radio operator for the resistance. 

It turns out that the rescue mission Captain Stewart parachuted into France to carry out involved three Germans, Albert, Liesel, and Jakob, posing as a family named Durand. Since Captain Stewart is too injured to carry out his mission, it is decided that Meg would lead the Durands to Spain and safety. Before she leaves, she is given a note from her father that Captain Stewart delivered, written in coded language. The next day Meg finds the Durands hiding in a cave where she also finds Captain Stewart's backpack full of spy paraphernalia and a warning not let anyone see what's in it. Fortunately, Meg was told that there are resistance workers along the way who are aware of the mission and can provide some assistance, but for the most part, the four are on their own. 

As if their journey weren't difficult enough, Lieutenant Becker is on Meg's trail, suspecting her of resistance work. And just as they get to the point where they should head to Spain, Meg solves her father's message and insists they go to Switzerland instead. But why? And why would he say not to trust one of the "Durands" and which one?

Rescue is an exciting book, full of mystery, intrigue, danger, and betrayal. It's the kind of book my today self thinks is at time preposterous yet I know my 11/12-year-old-self would have hung on every word and every moment of danger. But my today self also knows that codes and ciphers were very popular during WWII, so it isn't surprising that Meg and her dad have their fun with them. Would I let a 12-year-old do what Meg is asked to do? Not a chance, but during the war, kids did this and more. 

Captain Stewart was part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), as was Meg's father, and he arrived in France with his bag of spy tools, including a spy manual, which Meg refers to often. I liked that Nielsen used the rules from the book for some of her chapter headings. Since they worked in so well with what happens in the chapters they head, I suspect it was a made up book, but fun nevertheless. 

Nielsen has included a section called Secret Codes at the end of the novel for readers intrigued by them that includes all kinds of different codes they can try. I was one of those geeky kids who loved codes and secret languages growing up and still have a fascination for them.* There is also a section called The Special Operations Executive for readers unfamiliar with this organization created by Winston Churchill in 1940. 

Rescue is an exiting book that should appeal to anyone who likes historical fiction about WWII that includes plenty of adventure and danger.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was an eARC gratefully received from Edelweiss+

*I'm pretty sure my fascination with codes and coding is how I ended up in Information Technology, creating programs and teaching kids and adults about computers.  

The Book of Lost Names, a Novel by Kristin Harmel

I don't usually review adult novels on this blog, with the exception of mysteries, which are my guilty pleasure, but I found the description of this book intriguing enough to get it from the library. The author, Kristin Harmel, has written a number of books set in WWII and I suspect I will be reading more of them. The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the French Resistance, and the artistically talented people who used their skills to forge life-saving documents. 

It's 2005, and 86-year-old Eva Taube Abrams is still working in a Winter Park, Florida library when she reads an article about a German librarian, Otto Kühn, who is trying to return books that were looted by the Nazis towards the end of WWII to their rightful owners, or at least their families. What catches Eva's eye is a picture of a book called Epitres et Evangiles, a book she hasn't seen in over sixty years. She immediately makes a plane reservation to fly to Berlin and find Otto Kühn to get her book back.

Flashback to July 1942. The Nazi occupation of France has brought out a lot of anti-Semitism among the French, and now roundups of Jews are starting. Before her father is taken away by the Nazis, he tells Eva to visit his employer who will provide her with forged documents he has already paid for. But Monsieur Goujon only gives her all the materials she needs to forge her own documents. 

The forgeries, though not perfect, work and before long, Eva and her mother are on their way to Aurignon,  a small village in France's free zone. It doesn't take long for Eva's papers to be recognized as forgeries, but luckily it is by a member of the French Resistance. Soon, she finds herself in a secret library within the town's Catholic church, working with fellow forger Rémy Duchamp and creating documents for fleeing Jews and RAF pilots who need to get back to Britain.  

But when it came to forging documents for unaccompanied escaping Jewish children, Eva is adamant about preserving their real identity somehow. That way, if they survive the war, they can know who they really are. At first, Rémy is just as adamant about not keeping a record, but, afraid of losing Eva's forging talents, he works up a code that allows the names of the children to be hidden in a book called Epitres et Evangiles. 

There is definitely an attraction between Eva and Rémy, though neither acts on it, and Eva believes he was killed after the Aurignon resistance is betrayed. 

I can't say I was emotionally swept up in The Book of Lost Names, but I certainly did enjoy reading it enough that I finished it in one sitting.  It's clear that Hamel has done her research and put together an exciting tale of resistance and survival, and, lost love. It is a story based on a newspaper article in the NY Times about how the Germans were trying to find the owners of books stolen by the Nazis that Harmel read. I always find this slice of reality gives a story a real feeling of authenticity. 

The story goes back and forth between past and present, and one of the things I found interesting is that the present is narrated by older Eva, while there is an omniscient narrator for the past. Eva is such a realistic protagonist. She embodies all the fear, desperation, doubt, and courage of a young women caught in a life and death struggle to save herself and her mother, always believing that her father will one day come back to them. 

Two things I didn't like about this book were 1- Eva's mother, whose bitterness and anger didn't help Eva in her struggle to keep them out of Nazi hands; and 2- a few too many coincidences and close calls that probably wouldn't have happened under Nazi occupation.

Nevertheless, I would still definitely recommend this book for teens and adults.

You can find a reading guide for The Book of Lost Names courtesy of the publisher, Simon & Shuster, HERE

This book is recommended for readers age 15+

This book was borrowed from the NYPL

My Story: Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan by Sufiya Ahmed

I first learned about Noor Inayat Khan while reading Kathryn Atwood's brilliant YA book Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance and Rescue. Noor's WWII experiences as a radio operator for Winston Churchill's SOE (Special Operations Executive) is now made more accessible for younger readers with Sufiya Ahmen's excellent fictional biography.

Noor was an unusual yet totally logical choice for the SOE. She was born in Moscow, Russia to a white American mother and an Indian Muslim father. The family moved from Moscow in 1914 to London, where Noor's three siblings were born, and finally, in 1920, they settled in Paris, France. 

Ahmed begins Noor's story in May 1927, as the family journeys to India to visit the place where her father had died in February. It's there that Noor begins to realize just what it means to be her father's daughter. It makes her a princess with a famous royal ancestor - Tipu Sultan, who was a hero of colonial resistance and had been killed in 1799, "fighting like a tiger to save his people." (pg 17)

Fast forward to June 1940. With the Nazi invasion of France, the Khan family leaves Paris and relocates in England, just as the Blitz begins in full force. Finding rooms in Oxford, Noor's brother Vilayat wants nothing more than to join the Royal Air Force (RAF), but ends up in the Navy instead. Meanwhile, Noor uses her Red Cross certificate working in a military hospital. But getting caught in a daylight air raid while on a day trip into London makes Noor realize she wants to do more for the war effort. She decides to join the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). There, she becomes Nora Baker and is sent to Yorkshire for training in November 1940, where the weather is cold and windy, and the exercises are physically challenging. It is also there she discovers she has a real ability for Morse Code. 

Noor in uniform

After her WAAF training is complete, Noor is assigned to work in Bomber Command, but when she applies for a new commission, she's sent to Wiltshire for a 7-week training course. Afterwards, she is called for an interview, but when they ask her how she feels about Indian Independence from the British Empire, she is convinced that her answer, that she "believes the Indian people should be given their freedom," (pg 64) spells the end of her career. 

Instead, thanks to her excellent communication skills and her ability to speak French like a native, Noor is asked to become part of Churchill's SOE and begins training for her eventual return to France to work undercover as the first woman radio operator with the Resistance there under the code name Madeleine. The majority of the book is devoted to Noor's war work and are some really exciting chapters. Unfortunately, Noor was betrayed and as she is getting ready to leave France, she makes a poor decision and ends up captured by the Gestapo. It is, as Ahmed writes, the beginning of the end. 

My Story: Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan is written in the first person in Noor's voice. The book is organized in chapters that reflect Noor's activities in a given month. This makes it easier for readers to follow Noor's many adventures in India, England, and France.  

I was very curious to read My Story: Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan, first because I already knew about her life and work during WWII in France, and second, I was curious to see how it would be handled for young readers. And I thought that given the complexity of the subject matter, Sufiya Ahmed to a really great job of synthesizing the material for her target age group. Most kids have probably never heard of Noor, and it is especially important for young Muslim readers to know about her. 

What was particilarly good to see is that yes, Noor is a hero, but as Ahmed shows, she is not without flaws, doubts, and weaknesses, and sometimes she's even headstrong and impulsive. But Ahmed also shows how her parents were great influences on Noor, as were her ancestors. 

One thing of note, Ahmed points out, is that Noor had originally wanted to become a children's author. She loved tells tales to her siblings growing up and had even published a book of short stories called Twenty Jātaka Tales in 1939 and which I highly recommend since it is still in print. 

My Story: Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan is a definite must read for young readers interested in WWII history and/or women war heroes. It should be of particular interest to young Muslim readers.

This book is recommended for readers age 8+

This book was purchased for my personal library

Great Escapes #1: Nazi Prison Camp Escape by Michael Burgan, illustrated by James Bernardin

Nine-year-old Bill Ash knew he wanted to be a pilot even before the day in 1927 when he saw Charles Lindbergh in Dallas, Texas. But the Depression hit his family hard and left little time to think about flying. Then, in 1939, war was declared in Europe and, wanting to fight Hitler, Bill went to Canada to join the Royal Air Force there. Turns out, Bill was a natural in the air.

By 1942, he was flying missions from England to Europe in a Spitfire. And he was successful, that is, until March 24, 1942, when his plane was fired on. He crash landed in France, and with the help of some kind French people and the French resistance, almost made it back to England via Spain. But almost doesn't count - Bill was discovered and arrested by the Gestapo in Paris.

Bill was questioned and tortured to give up the names of the people who helped him in France. Thinking about the young girl named Marthe who had helped him, Bill was able resist the many beatings by the Gestapo. Eventually, he was sent by cattle car headed to Germany. There he was sent to a Nazi prison camp for POWs called Stalag Luft III. 

Once he reached Stalag Luft III, the urge to escape was great. But the first attempt failed and Bill found himself spending two weeks in solitary confinement a/k/a the Cooler. Undaunted, Bill and some of his fellow POWs kept trying to escape, followed by two weeks in the Cooler and nothing to eat but bread and water. 

When Stalag Luft III became crowded, Bill and others were sent to another POW camp in Poland via cattle car, which proved to be yet another failed escape attempt. In Poland, Bill and 24 other men decided to dig a tunnel from inside the latrine. They figured the smell of the latrine would keep the fastidious German soldiers away. Finally, in March 1943, thirty-three men were ready to escape. And Bill did make it to freedom, until he was caught...again. After even more escape attempts, Bill found himself back in Stalag Luft III, where he discovered he was known as the Cooler King.

Back where he began life as a POW, there were more escape attempts until finally in 1944 came the good news that the Allies had landed in France, and by 1945, they were in Belgium on their way to Germany. Bill and the other prisoners were forced to march from Stalag Luft III to Spremberg, Germany, where they were loaded on to cattle cars. By now, Bill and other POWs were ill, and taken to a military hospital outside Bremen, Germany. By the time he had recovered, the British were shelling the camp Bill was in, not realizing there were POWs there. Bill made one last escape attempt. This time he succeeded and was able to tell the approaching British tanks just were they Germans had positioned their tanks. 

Finally, after 13 attempted escapes, the war was over for Bill Ash and he was a free man.

Bill Ash in his Spitfire meeting the
Canadian Prime Minister

Great Escapes is a debut series and it is getting off to an exciting start with Nazi Prison Camp. Presenting Bill Ash's story in this short, but action-packed historical fiction novel is a great way to get reluctant readers reading as well as giving kids interested in WWII stories something different. After all, most kids know about Nazi concentration camps, but not much about what happened to POWs, and may have even just assumed they were immediately killed. 

There are sidebars to Bill's story in the first three chapters with information about The Depression, Concentration Camps, Spitfires and Other Aircraft of World War II, The Resistance to German Rule, andThe POWS of World War II. These are all topics readers will encounter throughout the novel. Sometimes I find sidebars intrusive in historical fiction. It was nice to read them at the beginning of Bill's story so that the exciting escapes weren't interrupted with information and readers already know what they need to know. And since it is a story about POWs, it is also a good way to introduce them to the Geneva Conventions that "spelled out how countries would treat prisoners of war."

There is a Selected Bibliography and an Author's Note in the back matter. A map is included at the beginning, but I wish it were a more detailed map to give young readers a sense of place and distance. Descriptions of Bill's escape attempts are detailed and riveting. Bill Ash's story is a survival story par excellence. 

This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was an EARC gratefully received from Edelweiss Plus

Bill Ash passed away in 2014 at the age of 96. You can read his informative obituary HERE 

The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor

In this novel told in alternating voices, one in the present, one is the past, the lives of two teenage girls have interesting parallels. 

No one was more surprised than 16-year-old New Jersey native Alice Prewitt to discover she had inherited an apartment in Paris' 9th Arrondissement from her beloved Gram, Chloe. Surprised because it is an apartment that had oddly never ever been mentioned, not to Alice, nor to Gram's daughter, Alice's mother. And it's not just any apartment, as Alice, her mom and dad discover, but what turns out to be a virtual time capsule of her Gram's family from the 1930s and 1940s. And the surprises don't stop there.

Going through some old photos in the apartment, Alice discovers that her Gram also had a sister named Adalyn Bonhomme that no one knew about. But why had Gram never mentioned a sister or the at-one-time-so-elegant apartment? Returning to the apartment a few days later to do more exploring, Alice is excited to find Adalyn's diary which she had begun on May 30, 1940. Writing about the Nazi occupation of France, Adalyn sounds ready to resist however she can.  But when Alice finds some magazine clippings with happy pictures of Adalyn dressed in high fashion and partying and a newspaper photo to her sitting in an expensive restaurant with six men wearing Nazi armbands, she finds her discoveries hard to process. Could Adalyn have been a Nazi collaborator? 

Yet, the deeper Alice digs into the lives of the Bonhomme family during the war, the clearer a picture of a dysfunctional family emerges. Adalyn and Chloe's father is a WWI veteran who suffers from PTSD, has basically withdrawn from life, and everyone must tiptoe around him so as not to upset him. Their mother is the image of privilege, buying costly rationed items on the black market, and attending society parties. The two sisters are very close, but as Adalyn's wartime resistance activities increase, she worries that Chloe's outspokenness and her distain for the Nazis will jeopardize the family. Meanwhile, she finds herself very attracted to Luc who is the leader of her resistance group, and who doesn't seem to feel the same attraction for Adalyn.

Alice's family is just as dysfunctional. The family tiptoes around Alice's mother's depression.  It's understandable that she would be depressed after just losing her mother, and then discovering the Paris apartment was left to her daughter instead of her, but it's also clear she has been depressed off and on Alice's whole life. I thought her father was kind of passive, content to wait out his wife's depressions, not wanting to upset her and waiting for her to ask for help, which she never does. As Alice says her "family's first language is small talk" so important issues are never addressed. Sadly, he doesn't seem to see what this is doing to Alice. Alice retreats to a cafe to do her family research,where she meets her love interest Paul, a student and aspiring artist. 

I really wanted to like The Paper Girl of Paris more than I did. But I felt there was just too much going on and it began to feel chaotic. I would have loved a story about Adalyn, her family and her resistance work. I really liked all of the historical elements in Adalyn's part of the story and how the diary gives a nice picture of life, which is then expanded in Adalyn's own narration. I think that these two things easily could have been presented without Alice's intervention.

So I'm sorry to say that I could have lived without Alice's story all together. She just wasn't as compelling a character as Adalyn. I thing Alice's story would make a nice novel about a contemporary girl dealing with a passive father and depressed mother. Her character turns the book into something of a mystery that needs solving, but it could have just as easily unfolded with that. I just felt that in The Paper Girl of Paris, she added nothing beyond being a plot device to get to Adalyn's more interesting story and her narration felt intrusive.   

Should you read The Paper Girl of Paris? Yes, if you like historical fiction wrapped in a mystery. 

This book is recommended for readers age 13+

This book was borrowed from the Queens Public Library

Catherine's War by Julia Billet, illustrated by Claire Fauvel

**Contains Spoilers**

It's 1942 and Rachel Cohen, a Jewish teen, has been enrolled in the progressive Sèvres Children's Home just outside Paris for four months. It's also been months since she heard anything from her parents and has no idea where they are or what may have happened to them. Luckily, she loves being part of Sèvres, and is convinced that the kind husband and wife who run it, Penguin and Seagull, are part of the French resistance. Thanks to Penguin, Rachel has found an interest in and has a talent for taking photographs and he has lent her a Rolleiflex camera, and has even taught her how to develop the photos she takes.

But as the Nazi stronghold in France tighteneds, and Jews are required to wear yellow stars, the heads of  Sèvres refuse to force that on their Jewish students. Instead, the students are asked to change their names to ones that are more Christian sounding and are given false identity papers. Rachel becomes Catherine Colin.

But when the Nazis begin rounding up Jews, it becomes clear that Sèvres is no longer safe for its Jewish students, even with false papers, and plans are made for the students to be spread around France for their safety. Catherine alias Rachel is sent to a convent in Riom with a younger student named Alice, but not before she is gifted the school's precious Rolleiflex camera by Seagull, who tells her to take photos of everything she sees as testimony after the war.

In Riom, Catherine is forced to eat pork, take catechism classes and communion in order to keep her cover. Taking photos proves to be the thing that helps her through. Then, in town to get her photos developed, she meets Étienne, who lets her use his darkroom. Catherine and Étienne are strongly attracted to each other, but when the convent is reported to the Nazis, it is time for Catherine and Alice to move on.

Over the course of the Nazi occupation of France, Catherine and Alice are sent to a small farm in Limoges, then an orphanage in the Pyrenees, where she and Alice go their separate ways, and finally to another small farm. But when France is finally liberated by the Allies, Catherine returns to Paris, where she hopes to find her parents. Instead she finds their apartment trashed and no information about what happened to them. But she is able to reconnect with Seagull, Penguin, and Alice. In 1945, she is finally able to become Rachel Cohen again. Rachel now finds there is a great deal of interest in the photographs she had taken all through her travels during the Nazi occupation and is offered a show in an art gallery. And finally, she and Étienne also reconnect, and yes, they eventually marry and move to the United States.

Catherine's War is based on the real life experiences of the author's mother as a Jewish teen in France during WWII. It is a powerful coming of age story that interrogates questions of identity during a time of crisis, when who one is was all that the Nazis needed to arrest and send you away, often never to be heard from again, like Rachel's parents.

This is one of the best graphic novels I've read in a while. The story's text is clear, straightforward, and succinct, thanks to the excellent translation from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger. Text and panels harmonize completely, making Rachel's story easy to follow despite so many characters and places. In her ink and watercolor panels, artist Claire Fauvel captures the differing emotions of the characters - fear, anger, happiness, loneliness, kindness - remarkably well, so that nothing is missed and there is no ambiguity. She used a palette of subtle dark grays, blues, and browns, which touches of brighter colors throughout. These dark colors reflect the dark times in which the story takes place.

When I was in college and living in the East Village in the early 1980s, I used to have an old Minolta SRT 101, that I absolutely adored. I also had a pen and ink drawing of it with the words "It's All in the Focus" written in the lens that a friend made for me. I learned a lot about life through my camera's lens, especially when the Aids crisis hit the village so hard then. For me, there is no question as to the power of art to bear witness and convey truth. I think this idea is brought to bear in an important conversation between Rachel and Étienne. He prefers portrait and landscapes while Rachel prefers more candid, in-the-moment daily life shots. The question becomes whose camera tells the greatest truth or do they both, but in different ways? Something to think about.

Back matter includes a map of Rachel's travels between 1942 and 1945, as well as some of the real photos taken by the author's mother, Tamo Cohen. There are also four pages of questions from readers with the author's answers.

Catherine's War is a story, as Julia Billet writes, "that reminds us that even when the wolves are howling death at your door, there are women and men who are still faithful to mankind." So, while this could be classified as a Holocaust story, it is also a resistance/survivor story. Either way, it is a graphic novel not to be missed.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Masters of Silence by Kathy Kacer

Sometimes, silence can speak louder than words as this novel about the world-famous mime Marcel Marceau shows.

Late one night siblings Helen, 14, and ten-year-old Henry Rosenthal arrive with their mother at a convent in the south of France, having clandestinely traveled there from their home in Kronberg, not far from Frankfurt, Germany. Their father had been arrested on Kristallnacht, and they have had no news of him for over a year now. Frau Rosenthal could hid with a Catholic family, posing as a servant for safety, but not the children and so they have journeyed to France, to a convent that was taking in Jewish children.

After their mother leaves to return to Germany in the hope of one day being reunited with her husband, Helen and Henry have their names changed to more French sounding names. Their new names are Claire and Andre Rochette. They are expected to assimilate into life at the convent and to be very careful about guarding who they and the other children really are, because as Mère Supérieure tells them "There can be no mistakes here...The safety of every child in this convent - the safety of us all- depends on each one of us." (pg. 37-8)

Fortunately both children speak French fluently, and though she misses her parents terribly, Helen begins to adjust to her new life, making friends with the other girls in her dormitory and a boy named Albert. For the most part, she likes the nuns, especially Sister Cecile but has particular difficulty with Sister Agnes, whom it seems Helen can never please and is given punishments for even the merest of reasons.

Henry, on the other hand, withdraws into silence as soon as his mother leaves, refusing to speak to anyone. He spends his time writing in a small notebook he had been given by Sister Cecile, who said that "maybe if he didn't want to talk, he could use it as a diary and write down his thoughts and feelings." (pg 41-2) The first thing he writes is his real name in big letters followed by a Jewish star, clearly in an attempt not to surrender his identity.

Helen is told that sometimes a clown named Marcel Marceau comes to the convent to entertain the children and they all look forward to his visits. And like Henry, the clown doesn't speak while he is performing his show. When the clown finally does come, Henry is immediately drawn to him and the way he can make himself understood without words. Henry begins staying after the shows, learning some of Marcel's miming mannerisms. A bond forms between them and they are soon able to silently communicate with each other.

But after a disastrous visit to the nearby village, where Helen and Henry are confronted by Nazi soldiers, life becomes increasingly dangerous at the convent. When one of the nuns is arrested, it is decided that the children need to be evacuated to Switzerland and safety, a few at a time. On the night that Helen, Henry, and Albert are scheduled to leave for the Swiss border, Marcel shows up to lead the way. It turns out the the clown is also a member of the French Resistance, who has been guiding people to the border all along by pretending to be a Scoutmaster. But as the Nazi danger grows, the trips are more and more perilous. Will they be successful escaping from France?

Masters of Silence is book 2 in Kacer's Heroes Quartet, the first book of which was The Sound of Freedom. And like Book 1, this is a fictionalized story that has its basis in fact - as a teenager, Marcel Marceau was indeed a member of the French Resistance and helped save Jewish children by bringing them to the Swiss border and providing them with forged papers and identity cards.

Masters of Silence is told in the third person, with points of view alternating between Helen and Henry. While is it is not an action-packed novel in the traditional sense, it is a nail-biting, tension-filled story that demonstrates the dangers and the fears that Jews were subjected to under Nazi domination, as well as the strength of one's sense of who they are, and that Jewish identity may be suppressed for safety's but it can never be destroyed. 

Helen is certainly a sympathetic character but is it Henry who really pulled on my heartstrings. Locked in his silence, angry, afraid, and traumatized, Henry learns how to communicate his feelings without using words, with the help of Marcel, and in the end, using what he has learned, he transforms into a courageous hero.

This is another excellent novel by Kathy Kacer, one that informs readers of another important yet relatively unknown WWII hero. Be sure to read Kacer's biography of Marcel Marceau in the back matter.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC gratefully received from NetGalley and Annick Press