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 

G.I. Dogs: Judy, Prisoner of War (G.I. Dogs #1) by Laurie Calkhoven

Judy is an English Pointer born in Shanghai, China in 1936. She's a curious pup and, at only three weeks old, she escapes her kennel and has some wild adventures in Shanghai, including her first run-in with Japanese soldiers, who kick her out of their way. By the time she gets back to the kennel, her brothers and sisters have all gone to homes, and the kennel owner decides to keep Judy.

At six months, however, Judy finds herself an official member of the British Royal Navy, on a gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River. English Pointers are supposed to be good hunting dogs, but that isn't Judy's skill. Instead, Judy turns out to be an excellent watchdog, able to sense oncoming danger long before any humans do. A helpful skill on the dangerous, pirate infested Yangtze River.

By the time WWII officially begins in 1939, Judy is on another gunboat, the HMS Grasshopper, sailing between Singapore and Hong Kong. When the U.S. enters the war in December 1941, everything changes. In early 1942, the Japanese occupy Singapore and the HMS Grasshopper is ordered to evacuate British women and children, but on their way to safety, the boat is hit by a bomb and Judy is trapped below deck.

Rescued, she finds herself on an island with the survivors, but no food or water. Luckily, Judy's keen senses discover an underground fresh water stream. Eventually they are rescued, and Judy and surviving men of the Grasshopper make the long trek to Sumatra, where they had hoped to get a ship to India, but instead find themselves prisoners of the Japanese.

Life in their Japanese prison camp is hard, particularly so for Judy. She hadn't liked Japanese soldiers since she was a puppy in Shanghai and they would kick her out of their way, and things never got better. If the men are given little to eat and drink, there is nothing for Judy, and beatings are common for all POWs. Judy learns to fend for herself, sharing whatever she catches with the other POWs, and learning to hide from the Japanese.

Both Judy and her special human, Frank Williams survive life as Japanese POWs and after the war, they go to live in England. Bored, Frank gets a job in Africa, and Judy spends her remaining years exploring the African bush there.

Judy, Prisoner of War is a fictionalized version of Judy's true story, and it is told from Judy's point of view. This is a nice chapter book that isn't overly graphic in describing the horrendous treatment of the POWs held captive by the Japanese, even though they were known for their particular cruelty. What the book does focus on instead is the loyal relationships that developed between Judy and the different special humans in charge of her.

Judy was clearly a very intelligent dog, otherwise she probably would never have survived the events she lived through, but I think at times, Calkhoven may give her a little more reasoning power than dogs actually have. Yet, it doesn't take away from the story, and is there for the readers understanding. And Judy is sure to endear herself to young readers, especially when they see how sensitive and comforting she was to the youngest victims of the war.

Be sure to read the back matter and look over the photographs to find out more about Judy and her wartime experiences.

Judy, Prisoner of War is a nice introduction to historical fiction, and the role of dogs in wartime situations. It would also be a great read aloud. 

This book is recommended for readers age 7+
This book was provided to me by the publisher, Scholastic Press

A Year of Borrowed Men by Michelle Barker, illustrated by Renné Benoit

I think that we sometimes think that if a person was German in the 1930s and early 1940s that automatically makes them Nazis. But the truth is that there were plenty of decent people who were not Nazis, didn't support Hitler and his Third Reich, and were just struggling to survive like anyone caught in a war.

A Year of Borrowed Men is just such a book. This fictionalized story that takes place during the last year of the war is based on the author's mother's actual experiences as she related them to her children. Farms and the food they produced were just as important to Germany during the war as they were everywhere else, but with all the men off fighting for the Führer, many farms were struggling to survive.

For Gerda Schlottke, 7, and her family living on a farm in a rural part of Germany, taking care of all the farm chores was getting difficult with her father off fighting in the Germany army. They had a good sized farm consisting of cows, pigs, 150 chickens and 6 horses that needed to be cared for everyday, as well as field work to be done and only 5 young children. To assist families like the Schlottkes, the German government decided to use POWs to help with the farm work. The German government sent them three French POWs - gentle Gabriel, prickly Fermaine, and cheerful Albert. The men lived in the cold, bear pig kitchen, next to where the animals slept. Families were not supposed to be kind to them, or to feed them or treat they like a member of the family, but for some people that was hard not to do.

One cold day, Gerda's mother invited the men into their warm kitchen to eat with the family. The next day, there was a knock on the door and Frau Schlottke was taken to police headquarters by a formerly kind neighbor who had joined the Nazis and warned not never to be kind to her workers again or she would find herself in prison.

Over the year that they 'borrowed' the French POWs, the Schlottke family found ways to counter the admonishment they were given regarding the treatment of Nazi Germany's enemies. For example, at Christmas, the men were allowed a tree, but no decorations, they were allowed to receive parcels, but no food from the Gerda's family, and yet they managed to find a way around that. It is interesting to see just how they could make the time somewhat bearable for Gabriel, Fermaine, and Albert and A Year of Borrowed Men is a nice reminder that there were at least a few pockets of humanity still to be found in what was an otherwise brutal regime.

At the end of the European war in the spring of 1945, the men left the farm and eventually returned to France. Meanwhile, the Russian army arrived, "liberating" all the farm animals, including those of the Schlottkes.

A Year of Borrowed Men is a gentle story, poignant in its hopeful perspective, perhaps because it is narrated by 7 year old Gerda, and Michelle Barker is able to retain all the the innocence of a child in her writing. A cruel, hateful regime and war, after all, doesn't mean one needs to sacrifice their humanity, as so many did living under Hitler and during WWII. Although the story covers the year the POWs were at the Schlottke's farm, because of the number of pages devoted to Christmas, it makes a nice holiday story, as well. There may not have been Peace of Earth at that time, but at least on one farm there was Goodwill towards men.

Renné Benoit's watercolor, pencil and pastel illustrations has a gentle, almost folk art feeling to them, done in a palette of warms browns, greens, and ochre earthtones that seems to create a haven in the midst of war.

This book is recommended for readers 6+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

It's 1944 and the D-Day invasion has already happened.  The Allies are pushing their way through France.

American Rose Justice has been flying since she was 12 years old.  Now, out of high school six months early, she is off to England to ferry planes for the Air Transport Auxiliary.  But Rose wants to do more than just ferry planes from one place to another in England.  she wants to fly into France and she has just the uncle who can pull strings for that, just as he had to get her to England and the ATA.

After flying Uncle Roger, alone in her plane, Rose spots a doodlebug, Germany's pilotless V1 bomb that can go so far and do so much damage, on its way to England   So Rose decides to take up the challenge and do a little doodlebug tipping, ramming the bomb with her plane's wingtip and causing it to lose course and explode in an unoccupied area.

But chasing the bomb leads Rose into dangerous territory and next thing she knows, she is being escorted to Germany by two Luftwaffe pilots.  And it doesn't take long before she finds herself in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

There, ironically, Rose is assigned to work in the Siemens factory making fuses for the V1 bombs.  But she refuses to do it and ends up in Block 32, on the third tier of a bunkbed, sleeping on a narrow wooden plank with no blanket but with three other people.  Here,  Rose meets the Rabbits, the girls and young women who were used for medical experiments in 1942.  But the Germans are losing the war and want to cover up their atrocities.  In Ravensbrück, they begin to execute the women, including the Rabbits, who had always been somewhat privileged.  Now, the challenge facing Rose is to survive in order to tell the world about the Rabbits and the experiments done on them.

First, if you plan to read Rose Under Fire, remember it is a companion book to Code Name Verity, not a sequel, though no less powerful, and it gives a nice sense of connectedness and continuity.  You will meet a few familiar characters like Maddie, Julie's friend, her brother Jamie, and her mother, still caring for evacuees in Castle Craig, Scotland.  But this is Rose Justice's story.

And it is quite a story.  Where Code Name Verity is about friendship and loyalty, Rose Under Fire is about family and loyalty. Not the family that we are born into, but the kind of family that is formed by shared experience.  Related by trauma, by living together in the worst of conditions, yet finding the strength to support each other, to care for each other and to help keep alive the hope that their stories won't die with them, but will be told to the world.

Rose Under Fire is a first person narrative, told by Rose through journal entries.  A young, naive girl from Pennsylvania, as we read Rose's entries, we see her change as she experiences the realities of war firsthand.   And Wein doesn't spare us.  She gives us concentration camp life at its worst.  But she counters the cruel, the dehumanizing, the sadistic acts that were inflicted on all the prisoners, with the sustenance of Rose's own beautifully sad heart-wrenching poetry, as well as the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, of Rose's wonderfully made up rescue stories and her remembered Girls Scout camp songs:

"I taught my companions Scout song and learned theirs; I produced more poetry in six months than I'd ever produced in my life, most of it in my head.  And I was part of a family - Lisette, Irina, Karolina Rózȧ." (pg 323)

I knew those camp songs, remember the sense of solidarity they produced as we sang them around a campfire (and I'm still friends with my old camp mates).

Though it has a slight connection to Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire is a stand alone novel.  You don't have to read one to understand the other.  But like, CNV, it is rich in historical detail.  Readers should be sure to read Wein's Afterword since she did make a few minor changes to keep the flow of Rose's story.  But, it is also clear that Wein has really done her research on Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and should you wonder, and as she stresses in the Afterword, it really did exist and so did the Rabbits.

Wein writes novels that make it difficult to write an effective review without slipping in spoilers, so I will end with saying that Rose Under Fire is indeed a Five Star novel, as was CNV,  If you like historical fiction, then this might be a novel for you (but don't forget the tissues).

This book is recommended for readers age 14+
This book was an E-ARC from Netgalley

Elephant Run by Roland Smith

Elephant Run is an exciting action-packed story, set in 1941/2 in Burma (now Myanmar) just as Japan is turning its sites on it for military purposes.

Nick Freestone, 14, has been living with his mother and step dad in London, but now it is 1941, the Blitz is in full swing and one night, the building they are living in is destroyed by a bomb. His parents have become increasingly involved in wartime activities and Nick’s mother decides to send him to Burma, to live on his father’s timber plantation, Hawk’s Nest, and, she believes, in relative safety.

But safety really did prove to be only relative, since there is some tension in Burma because many of the Burmese want their independence from Britain. This sentiment is also shared by some of the mahouts, the men who work and care for the timber elephants on the Freestone plantation. After the Japanese have successfully invaded Rangoon, Burma’s capital, with the help of some of the mahouts, they also take over Hawk’s Nest, turning it into a military center of operations. Nick’s father is arrested and sent to a POW camp; Nick is held prisoner at the plantation and forced to work in what is now the garden of the cruel Colonel Nagayoshi. Nick’s work is supervised by the kinder Captain Sonji, but he is also at the mercy with the pitiless, vengeful Bukong, a former mahout who seems to enjoy beating Nick and others with his cane.

The one person who has real freedom of movement is Hilltop, a Buddhist monk who seems to be able to speak with the elephants and who is said to be over 100 years old. Hilltop knows the Burmese jungles better that anyone and offers Nick his one hope of escaping and rescuing his father.

Elephants are one of my favorite animals and I was very interested in that part of this book. Smith’s mahouts are very kind to their animals and seem to genuinely appreciate what they are capable of doing. One elephant in particular stands out in this book, a character in his own right, a example of the old adage that elephants never forget. Hannibal is a very large elephant who was once savagely attacked by a tiger while tied up. Not longer able to be used as a timber elephant, he roams the jungle. But as the story unfolds, the reader learns the role various people played in Hannibal’s life that demonstrates the truth in that adage.

Elephant Run is an ideal book for anyone who likes a well written, well researched book of historical fiction. It seamlessly incorporates the cultural history of mahouts and their elephants with the factual history of the Japanese invasion of Burma. In this story, the invasion centers on building a fictional airfield at Hawk’s Nest and using POWs, both foreign and Burmese, to build the very real Burma Railroad.  This was an undertaking that resulted in a very high death rate among the workers, a fact Smith continuously points out. Because Nick is not familiar with life on his father’s plantation, Smith uses it as an opportunity to talk about the work of the mahouts, how the elephants are trained and other aspects of plantation life in Burma to inform the reader without straying from the story.  Some might find this pedantic, I found it interesting.

This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up.
This book was purchased for my personal library.

There are excellent curriculum aides for Elephant Run are available at the author’s website.

Elephant Run has received the following well-deserved honors:
2007/2008 Winter Children’s Book Sense Pick
2008 Anserson’s Bookshop Mock Newbery Award List
2009 American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults nomination
2008/2009 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Mast List nomination
2008/2009 Great Stone Face Children’s Book Award
2011 Oregon Reader’s Choice Award (ORCA) Intermediate Division
2011/2012 Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award nomination
2012 Grand Canyon Reader Award nomination Tween Book Catagory

This is book 4 of my East and SouthEast Asia Challenge hosted by Violet Crush

Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang, translated by Rachel Ward

Traitor begins in the winter of 1944. Anna Brünner, 16, lives in Stiegnitz, a small village, with her mother and grandmother, not exactly Nazi supporters, and her younger brother Felix, member of the Hitler Youth and completely indoctrinated in National Socialist dogma. Older brother Seff is fighting at the Eastern front. Anna's father, Felix Brünner, had been a conjuror with a traveling circus before marrying her mother, and had committed suicide when Anna was still a baby.

During the week, Anna goes to school in Schonberg, living in an attic room rented from a widow, and coming home every Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.

While walking home from the train station, Anna notices some odd footprints in the snow. Becoming curious, she follows them all the way to her family’s barn. Climbing up into the hay loft, Anna finds a sleeping man lying there, wet and emaciated.  Anna assumes that he is an escaped patient from the nearby mental asylum, but at home, her grandmother tells her about eight Russian POWs who had escaped in the area. Seven of them were found and shot on the spot. Anna naturally assumes that the man in the barn is the last missing Russian, but still feels sorry for him.  She tells her grandmother that she thinks she is getting a cold and is given a jug of steaming milk and told to go to bed. Naturally, Anna sneaks it out to the hay loft and gives the milk to the man.

Anna continues to think about this man and before returning to school on Sunday, she givess him clean, dry clothes, some food and takes him to the Moserwald Bunker, a large complex that had been used for defense at one time, but has long since been abandoned. Using hand motions, she explains that he must stay there or he will be caught. With the help of a calendar, Anna indicates that she will return the following weekend.

Although Anna knows it is treasonous to help the enemy, she continues to bring the Russian, whose name is Maxim, more clothing and food. After giving him her older brother’s clothes, Anna becomes afraid that they can be traced back to her if Maxim if found. As Anna becomes increasingly stressed by this, her landlady, Mrs. Beraneck, notices and, knowing she is not a supporter of the NS regime, Anna finally confides in her that she is hiding Maxim. Just before Christmas vacation, Anna find clothing, toiletries and some kitchen utensils in her room for Maxim, left there by Mrs. Beranek.

The police have by now basically given up their search for Maxim. By now, the war is not going well for the Germans and the Russian Army has been pushing westward, getting closer and closer to Stieglitz. Anna’s brother Felix, however, has been watching her closely and following her when she goes to visit the bunker. He finally confronts Anna, telling her that he thinks she is hiding the prisoner and reminding her that that is treason, punishable by death. She explains that she goes to the bunker to be alone and write poetry. He accepts this explanation with skepticism.

Traitor is a taut, psychological novel, full of the kind of suspense that grips the reader, making it impossible to put the book down. It relies, for the most part, on Anna’s thoughts to move the narrative forward, so the reader can see the interesting play of what she thinks and what she does. It had me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading. There seemed no possibility that this story of Anna and Maxim could have any kind of good resolution. But as the Red Army gets closer, a good outcome seems to become a possibility. Still, the ending was not what I was expecting at all. Not one of the possibilities for a positive or negative ending that occurred to me prepared me for what does happen. But I leave it at that.

Traitor is so well worth reading and I highly recommend it. I think Anna dilemma and her actions, coupled with the way the author builds up the tension, would be very appealing to teen readers. Often translations are not as good as the original because, as they say, something gets lost. But Rachel Ward has done a great job capturing the deveolping warm relationship between Anna and Maxim in an otherwise cold and impersonal landscape that reflects the militaristic society the Nazis were so good at creating. They say you should write what you know and the Sudetenland under Nazi domination is something that Gudrun Pausewand would know about firsthand. Pausewang was born there in 1928 and spent her youth living under Nazi rule until fleeing with her family from the advancing Russian army in 1945.

This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up.
This book was borrowed from the Grand Central Branch of the NYPL

Another review of Traitor may be found at Bites

Music for the End of Time by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Beth Peck

Music for the End of Time is the story about the time that French composer Olivier Messiaen spent as a prisoner of war in *Stalag VIIIA, in Görlitz, Germany. It begins with his arrival at the camp, clutching a knapsack. After the prisoners are settled into their barracks, cold, tired and hungry, one of the other prisoners wants to know if there is food in Olivier’s knapsack. Grabbing the bag, the other prisoners discover there is only sheet music in it. Disappointed, they go back to their bunks.

Not long after his arrival, while Olivier is listening to the morning birdsong, a prison guard comes over and tells the composer to follow him. He takes in to a small, cold room off a lavatory, and tells Messiaen that he may come here for a while every day and compose his music.

At first, nothing comes to Messiaen. He feels discouraged, believing no one will hear anything he creates. One day, a new truckload of prisoners arrive, two of whom are carrying instruments. Inspired by the sight of these musicians, Messiaen soon begins a composition based on the birdsong he can hear, even in prison.

Late in the winter, Messiaen finishes his composition, and on January 14, 1941, along with three other prisoner musicians, performs his newly written composition, Quartet for the End of Time, for all the 5,000 prisoners in the camp, as well as the German guards.

This was a lovely story accompanied by the beautiful pastel illustrations done by Beth Peck and I highly recommend it, despite some criticism. The author focuses only on the story of Messiaen’s musical creation, which is fine. I think, however, she leaves out some biographical information that might be interesting to know. Messiaen was a prisoner of war; he was not in the same kind of camp that Jews and other enemies of the Reich were put into. She says he survived the war, but he really spent one year as a prisoner of war, from May 1940 to May 1941. In her Author’s Note, Bryant does explain that the piece Messiaen wrote was called “Quartet for the End of Time" and it is based on a passage from the Books of Revelations, when an angel announces “There will be no more time.”

This book is recommended for readers age 9-12.
This book was borrowed from the Yorkville Branch of the NYPL.

Music for the End of Time received the following well-deserved honors:
2006 Bank Street College Best Children's Books of the Year
2006 Cooperative Children's Book Center, CCBC Choices List
2006 Society of Illustrators "The Original Art" Annual Exhibition

More information about Music for the End of Time, including a link to a very useful discussion guide may be found Jen Bryant Books

More information about Olivier Messiaen may be found at The Olivier Messiaen Page

An a short sample of Quartet for the End of Time may be seen and heard at YouTube
*Stalag is an acronym for Stammlager, which is a prisoner of war camp for soldiers not including any officers.

Non-Fiction Monday is hosted this week by Wrapped in Foil 

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

September 27^th to October 2^nd is Banned Book Week.  There are not too many books about World War II for children and young people that have been banned but there are three – Anne Frank:The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank was challenged as recently as 2010, while  Slaughterhouse Five or the Children’s Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut and Summer of My German Summer by Bette Greene were among the top 100 banned/challenged books of 2000-2009.

I had never read Summer of My German Soldier before now, though I did get an in depth description of it when my niece read it in middle school. It is the story of 12 year old Patty Bergen, a Jewish girl living in Jenkinsville, Arkansas. Her father owns a small department store there, and is helped out by her mother. Patty and her younger sister, Sharon, are cared for by Ruth, their black housekeeper. Patty is a lonely girl, who is constantly criticized by her mother and mistreated and physically abused by her father. She receives three severe beatings by him in the course of the novel.

The story begins with the arrival of a trainload of German POWs, who are taken to a barracks outside of town to work in the fields. One day the prisoners are brought into the store to buy straw hats to wear while working. Patty is there and offers to help one of the prisoners buy some pencils, paper and a pencil sharpener. He tells her his name is Frederick Anton Reiker and she learns that he speaks flawless English because his mother was English and his father had studied in London. By the time the prisoners leave, Patty has developed a very serious crush on Anton.

Not long after this, on the day that eight German saboteurs* are arrested by the FBI, Patty is sitting in her hideout above the garage, looking out the window when she notices something moving outside. Recognizing it to be Anton, she goes running after him and brings him back to her hideout. She brings him food and, since it is summer vacation and her parents don’t want her to hang out at the store, she spends her time getting to know Anton better. He is gentle, intelligent and witty, and fulfils a need in Patty, treating her with respect and kindness. But one evening, when her father sees her speaking to Freddy Dowd, a slow, poor boy she has been told to stay away from, her father beats her, first with his fists and then his leather belt. Seeing this, Anton starts to run out of the garage to stop the beating, but Patty yells for him to go away so her father won’t see him. Ruth, watching the beating from the house, sees Anton and the next day she persuades Patty to tell her who he is. Patty explains the situation and Ruth, who is Patty’s only ally at home, has Anton come into the house to eat the breakfast she prepared for him. Soon, however, it becomes clear that Anton must leave, that things are going to get dangerous now that the FBI is looking for him, believing he is part of the ring of saboteurs caught earlier. Patty gives Anton a clean monogrammed shirt she had given to the father for Father’s Day, a gift he had tossed aside.  Before Anton leaves, he gives Patty a ring to remember him by, a meaningful ring which had been in his family for generations. And it is this shirt and ring that allows the FBI to connect Anton to Patty.

Summer of My German Soldier is a quintessential coming of age story that also manages to realistically capture the feeling of fear and anxiety that people felt during the war. It also portrays racism in its various forms, racism directed at African-Americans in the Jim Crow south, and the wartime hated that could so easily spring up against Jews, Germans and Asians. In one example, Patty describes the way a Chinese merchant’s store was vandalized and he was effectively run out of town because the people didn’t know the difference between Japanese and Chinese. Greene also brings to light the kind of hypocrisy that is sometimes found in people who should be free of the kind of behavior. When the townspeople learn that Patty has helped a German POW, it is the minister’s wife who spits out “Jew Nazi-lover” at Patty as she is being escorted out of town by the FBI.

This novel has also been challenged for being sexually explicit, something I seem to have missed, and for the language used in it. Both of these things seem to be standard fare of those who desire a book to be banned under the guise of protecting the young impressionable reader. Additionally, the ending has been criticized for being too pessimistic and unsuitable for young readers. I found the story to be both believable and understandable in part because of the ending, although at times Patty did get under my skin. The hardest thing for me to read were the severe beatings she was given by her father, with noticeable marks on her body and, clearly, it was something he did frequently.  I can only imagine how lonely and unloved Patty must have felt afterwards.  Yet, no one stood up for her, except in the end the housekeeper Ruth, even at the cost of her job.  It is always difficult to read about children being abused, in books and in reality.

All in all, however, I am glad I finally got around to reading Summer of My German Soldier, and would not recommend others wait this long.     

Summer of My German Soldier was an ALA Notable Book, a New York Times Book of the Year (1973) and National Book Award Finalist.

*The day was 27 June 1942 when eight German saboteurs were arrested. Four of them had arrived in U-boots on 13 June 1942 in Amagansett, Long Island and four arrived the same way on17 June 1942 in Ponte Verde, near Jacksonville, FL. They were carrying explosives and $150,000 for bribing people and their mission was to blow up military targets.