The Bicycle Spy by Yona Zeldis McDonough

It's November 1942, and Marcel Christophe, 12, has one dream - to ride in the famous bike race the Tour de France when he gets older.  For now, though, he must be content with practicing on his bicycle, riding to school and delivering bread to customers of his parents' bakery.  The race has been cancelled since the Nazis began occupying northern France in 1940, but Marcel knows it will be back after the war is over.  Now, however, the Nazis have also invaded the southern part of France where Marcel lives, making things difficult for everyone.  Not only are there shortages and rationing, but soldiers are stopping people to question where they are going and why.

The first time Marcel is stopped by a guard, his parents want to know all about it.  The next time they ask him to deliver bread to his aunt and uncle. his mother gives him some pain d'epice (gingerbread) to offer to the guard if he is stopped again.  Sure enough, the guard is there, and more than willing to let Marcel go by in exchange for the gingerbread.  Afterwards, Marcel decides to slice off a little of the bread to eat and discovers a note written by his father baked into it.  Suddenly, Marcel realizes he has been making a lot more bread deliveries these past few weeks, but why?  Stunned, Marcel realizes his parents are in the resistance and his is delivering messages for them.  Realizing the danger for everyone concerned, he decides to keep this to himself.

Meanwhile, at school, there is a new girl named Delphine Gilette  who is not only a very good student, but knows all about the Tour de France thanks to her brother and father's interest in the race. It doesn't take long before she and Marcel become fast friends, riding their bikes together, playing together and doing homework.  But just as Marcel has a secret, so does Delphine and when a boy in their class discovers a revealing photograph in her school satchel, her secret is exposed.  Delphine and her family are Jews from northern France who had traveled to southern France using forged papers when it was still free of Nazis soldiers.  Now, they will need new papers to try to get out of France to safely.

Marcel realizes he must confess to his parents that he knows that they are part of the resistance in order to help his friend escape France.  Luckily, his parents are more than willing to help, but they must send Marcel to a fellow resistance contact on his bicycle.  What should have been a simple trip, however, is anything but.  Everything that could go wrong does, including a flat tire that forces Marcel to trade his beloved bike for a beat up replacement that will take him further from home than he has ever been seeking the right people who can help Delphine and her family get out of France.

But the Nazis have already begun rounding up all the Jews in the area.  Will Marcel make it to his final destination and home again before Delphine and her parents are found and deported?

At first I thought The Bicycle Spy was not going to be a very interesting story, but that quickly changed and it proved to be a very accessible, exciting narrative of courage and friendship.  The language is direct and clear, and terms that might be unfamiliar to readers are defined in the glossary at the back of the book. Told in the third person, Marcel's story unfolds simply and believably.  I say believably because after reading so many stories about the courageous acts of children to help other, I can easily see how this could have happened.

As a protagonist, Marcel is a typical, unassuming 12 year old, who is happy riding his bike, racing his friends, and dreaming about his big Tour de France wins, yet he also seems surprised by his own bravery.  Delphine, a girl who has had to move around because of the Nazis, feels a little more down to earth but the reader will definitely feel her underlying anxiety, even when she appears to be so confident.

I really liked the way Yona Zeldis McDonough managed to keep the tension building slowly right up to the end of the novel, making it a deceptively simple, thought provoking story.  I also like the way she incorporated information about the Nazi occupation of France, WWII and even the Tour de France so easily that it felt like a natural part of the narrative, and not like she was teaching her readers a lesson.

McDonough has also included a short history of WWII, as well as a Timeline, a short history of the Tour de France (something I found very interesting since all I know about this race has to do with the disgraced Lance Armstrong) and books for further reading.

There is much in The Bicycle Spy that will appeal to young readers and for that reason, I highly recommend it to them.

This book is recommended for readers age 8+
This book was sent to me by the publisher, Scholastic Press

The Plot to Kill Hitler - Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Unlikely Hero by Patricia McCormick

The fact is that most people don't really know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer was or, if they know the name, they aren't sure of what he did beyond opposing the Nazis.  To be honest, beyond using a few quotes for papers I have written (my favorite The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children) and knowing why he died young in a German concentration camp, I didn't know that much about his entire life either.

But, in the history of the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an interesting figure.  A deeply religious man and a pacifist, one has to wonder how did a man who came from a large, well-to-do, well-educated family end up being executed by hanging at the age of 39 for his involvement in a plot to kill Hitler?  In her new book, The Plot to Kill Hitler, Patricia McCormick explores that very question.

The youngest of eight children, all accomplished, Dietrich wanted to achieve something all his own. Invited to study at a music conservatory, he had already decided to study theology and become a minister, beginning his studies in 1923.

Slowly, as Hitler became more and more popular, Dietrich formulated his own ideas about the church.  Ultimately, he came to believe that the church shouldn't be an authoritarian force in people's lives, but rather it should be a "force for good," that it should be "deeply and directly involved in the problems facing ordinary people." (pg 27)

Over time, Dietrich would come under the influence of people who felt as he did, and he would learn much from people like Frank Fisher, with whom he became friends while studying in 1930 at Union Theological Seminary in NYC.  Fisher introduced Dietrich to the reality of life for African Americans in Harlem, even taking him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Dietrich ended up teaching Sunday School for a while.  Another influence at that time was Rabbi Stephen Wise, who sensitized him to what was happening to Jews in Germany because of Hitler's anti-Semitism rhetoric.

Returning to Germany, Dietrich refused to pledge his support for Hitler's new church, the Reichkirche, a church that replaced God with Hitler as it head.  Eventually, as things in Germany worsened, Dietrich's siblings and and brothers-in-law drew him into a plot to kill Hitler.  But Dietrich was a pacifist, even wanting to study under Gandhi in India, so how could he possibly justify an assassination of another human being, even one as dangerous as Hitler?

Dietrich's answer was simple and may surprised young readers of this very well-done biography.  The book begins with Cast of Characters, always a good idea when writing about people that are probably not familiar to readers, but whom they will no doubt find fascinating.

And even though the Cast of Characters tells the readers the fate of these participants in the plot to kill Hitler, McCormick has written in such a way that it maintains a tension throughout and even knowing the outcome assassination attempt, makes you hope against hope it will come out differently.

McCormick includes copious photographs, occasional offsets to give more information about certain people or concepts that may need a little more explanation, and the is lots of informative back matter. This includes an Author's Note, a extensive Timeline, Endnotes (always important), and a Selected Bibliography,

I found The Plot to Kill Hitler to be a very inspiring book, not because it was full of grime detail about the planning to pull off an assassination attempt, but because it was full of ideas and the development of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thinking.  Like Bonhoeffer, I am also a pacifist and I have often wondered what I would do if I found myself in the kind of situation he found himself in. Interestingly, I did find at least part of an answer in The Plot to Kill Hitler.

This book will be available September 13, 2016.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book is an ARC received from the publisher.

Movie Matinee #8 - Winter in Wartime

Way back on November 1, 2011, I reviewed a book called Winter in Wartime by Jan Terlouw (my review).  I found the book to be a compelling coming of age story about a 15 year-old Dutch boy named Michiel who becomes involves with the resistance movement there quite inadvertently in the last year of the war.

Though the book was published in Dutch in 1972, it wasn't until 1978 that an English language translation of it was available. Then, in 2008, a film version of the book was released in Holland. The film was directed by Martin Koolhoven, done in Dutch, English, and German and starred a young Dutch actor named Martijn Lakemeier.  

At the time I wrote my review, I mentioned that a movie had been made from the book Winter in Wartime.  I also said that I had heard that the movie wasn't very good.  On January 4, 2013, a comment was left on my review in which the commenter said they had seen the movie and it was actually quite excellent.  On August 8, 2016, another comment was left that seconded the comment left in 2013 about the excellence of the film version of Winter in Wartime. 

Well, I finally was able to watch the movie on Netflix thanks to my allergies and asthma which has sidelined for the last two weeks.  

And I have to say that my two commenters were absolutely correct to say Winter in Wartime is an exceptional film. In fact, it has even won a number of awards, mostly European, although it was shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2009 Academy Awards.  

And while I do recommend this film to anyone interested in World War II, this is not a movie for young viewers.  Among other themes, it is a story of loss and betrayal, and there are some raw scenes that are simply not meant for everyone, which is why it received an R rating.

What did I learn from all this?  Judge for yourself.

You read the New York Times review of Winter in Wartime HERE

Hitler's Canary by Sandi Toksvig

It's April 1940 and suddenly the sunny blue sky over Copenhagen, Denmark is dark with airplanes. The German Luftwaffe is dropping leaflets telling the Danes that the Germans have come to protect them from the evil British and French.

At first, life doesn't change much for Bamse, the 10 year old son of a famous stage actress and a set designer/painter father, or for his best friend Anton, also 10 and Jewish.  They keep their heads down and try to stay out of trouble.

But Bamse begins to notice his older brother's odd new behavior. Orlando refuses to be quiet and allow his country to be invaded and occupied, and he's especially angry that the Danes are being called Hitler's Canary in Britain, because they didn't fight back and now, they are just being quiet and docile towards the Germans.  It is particularly galling to Orlando, since Denmark was a country the believed in freedom and equality for all.

After letting Orlando know that they are aware of his activities, Bamse and Anton begin running resistance errands for him. At first, it all seems exciting and fun to the two young boys, but as time goes by, Nazi oppression begins to be felt more and more.  To make matters worse,  incidents against Jews increase.  Then Bamse's family is rocked when it is discovered that sister Masha has become romantically involved with a young German soldier, actually meeting him at night in the family garden.

To top that off, Uncle Johann arrives in Copenhagen, announcing he will be staying with the family, a situation that becomes awkward when they discover he is a Nazi sympathizer, thinking they are right about the Jews ruining everything in Denmark, despite evidence to the contrary.  Fear and occupation begin to feel real and scary for Bamse and Anton when they learn that Orlando has been arrested, along with the other resistance members.  Arriving at the dentist's office that also served the resistance, they find it has been ransacked by the Nazis, and everything in it confiscated.

Though Bamse's father had believed that the Nazis would never deport the Danish Jews if they all cooperated, in 1943, word leaks out that they do indeed plan on rounding up all of Denmark's Jews on Rosh Hashanah, figuring they will all be home for the Jewish New Year. Knowing that the Nazis are watching their apartment, Bamse's family and neighbors quickly mobilize to hide Anton and his family, plus a few more Jews who are in their apartment.

We do know that Denmark's approximately 7,800 Jews were almost all save, but will Bamse's friend Anton and his family make it out of their hiding place and to Sweden before the Nazis find them?  

Hitler's Canary is a captivating novel that is based on the experiences of author's Danish family in World War II, which may be why it has such a strong feeling of reality despite being historical fiction. Told in the first person by Bamse (the character modeled on the author's father), he proves to be quite a lively narrator, easily detailing his exploits with Anton for the resistance with both gravity and humor.  He also details the way life was before the Nazis arrived in Denmark, so the reader can compare the changes under Nazi occupation. Denmark had long ago granted full emancipation to the Jews living there, and, for the most part, they lived quiet lives among friends and neighbors.  So when it came time to decide what to do when word came that the Nazis planned on rounding the Jews up, most Danes believed that preventing that from happening was just the right thing to do, and Bamse makes sure his readers understand that.

I had picked up Hitler's Canary a while ago and just couldn't get into it, so when I saw it in the library, I decided to give it another try and I am so glad I did.  The characters are all so wonderful. I loved Bamse's mother Marie.  She is such an eccentric person, drawing on lines from past plays she had acted in whenever the situation called for a response.  But when it counted, she came through, even if it cost her more than she could possibly imagine.  Bamse's father is more down to earth, though sometimes taking the path of least resistance, but in the end, he, too, really understands the seriousness of the Jewish situation and comes through.

At one point in the story, the boys from the Churchill Club are mentioned, and for anyone familiar with this resistance ground, it will add more of a sense of reality to the novel, reminding readers that all over Denmark, people were active underground in a effort to sabotage everything the Nazi's did in their country.

Hitler's Canary is a thought provoking novel about courage, loyalty, the importance of family and friends in difficult times, demonstrating that people can make a difference if they work together.  

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

FYI: it was Winston Churchill who called the Danes "Hitler's pet canary" for not fighting back when the Nazis invaded their country, but in all fairness, the Danish were a peaceful people and their fighting forces were just not match for the Germans.  On the other hand, they had a great resistance movement that really drove the Nazis to distraction.

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that highlights

upcoming releases we can't wait to read.

There was an article published in the New York Times on July 13, 2016 called "Novels Bring World War II to Life for a New Generation."  According to the article historical fiction about World War II is having a renaissance and when on to showcase three relatively new novels: Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse, Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, and The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne (links are to my reviews).   

It seems as though the boon in WWII books is continuing - in fiction as well as nonfiction.  Take October 2016, for instance.  As you can see below, it is going to be a big month for books written for young readers about WWII:

Fiction:

Aim by Joyce Moyer Hostetter
Calkins Creek, 2016, 288 pages, age 9+
Available: October 4, 2016

From Goodreads:
As World War II threatens the United States in 1941, fourteen-year-old Junior Bledsoe fights his own battles at home. Junior struggles with school and with anger—at his father, his insufferable granddaddy, his neighbors, and himself—as he desperately tries to understand himself and find his own aim in life. But he finds relief in escaping to the quiet of the nearby woods and tinkering with cars, something he learned from his Pop, and a fatherly neighbor provides much-needed guidance. This heartfelt and inspiring prequel to the author’s Blue andComfort also includes an author’s note and bibliography.

Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II by Alan Gratz 
Scholastic Press, 2016, 320 pages, age 9+
Available: October 11, 2016

From Goodreads:
Infiltrate. Befriend. Sabotage.
World War II is raging. Michael O'Shaunessey, originally from Ireland, now lives in Nazi Germany with his parents. Like the other boys in his school, Michael is a member of the Hitler Youth.
But Michael has a secret. He and his parents are spies.
Michael despises everything the Nazis stand for. But he joins in the Hitler Youth's horrific games and book burnings, playing the part so he can gain insider knowledge.
When Michael learns about Projekt 1065, a secret Nazi war mission, things get even more complicated. He must prove his loyalty to the Hitler Youth at all costs -- even if it means risking everything he cares about.
Including... his own life.
From acclaimed author Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087) comes a pulse-pounding novel about facing fears and fighting for what matters most.

Liberty (Dog of World War II) by Kirby Larson
Scholastic Press, 2016, 240 pages, age 9+
Available: October 11, 2016

From Goodreads:
Fish has a knack for inventing. His annoying neighbor, Olympia, has a knack for messing things up. But when his latest invention leads Fish to Liberty, a beautiful stray dog who needs a home, he and Olympia work together to rescue her.
At the Higgins boatyard, where the boats that just might save the Allied forces during World War II are built, the wartime workforce is integrated and includes women and the disabled. However, a friendship that crosses racial lines is not the norm in 1940s New Orleans.
Fish, who suffered from polio and whose dad is away fighting in Europe, looks up to Mr. Higgins, and he's thrilled when one of his inventions helps Mr. Higgins's engineers unlock the mechanics of the landing crafts. Mr. Higgins inspires him to be bold and brave. As Fish enlists the help of unexpected friends and allies to save Liberty, he finds his perceptions of the world -- of race and war, family and friendship -- transformed.

Nonfiction:

Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II by Albert Marrin
Knopf BFYR, 2016, 256 pages, age 12+
Available: October 11, 2016

From Goodreads:
Just seventy-five years ago, the American government did something that most would consider unthinkable today: it rounded up over 100,000 of its own citizens based on nothing more than their ancestry and, suspicious of their loyalty, kept them in concentration camps for the better part of four years. 
 How could this have happened? Uprooted takes a close look at the history of racism in America and carefully follows the treacherous path that led one of our nation’s most beloved presidents to make this decision. Meanwhile, it also illuminates the history of Japan and its own struggles with racism and xenophobia, which led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, ultimately tying the two countries together. 
 Today, America is still filled with racial tension, and personal liberty in wartime is as relevant a topic as ever. Moving and impactful, National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin’s sobering exploration of this monumental injustice shines as bright a light on current events as it does on the past.

What new books are you waiting for?