The Night War
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
‘We don’t choose how we feel, but we choose how we act. Choose courage.’
From the two-time Newbery Honor-winner and a #1 New York Times bestselling author of The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won comes a new middle-grade novel, in which a girl who has lost everything must decide whether to risk her life to bring others to freedom.
In 1942, much of France is occupied by the Nazis. Twelve-year-old Miri is Jewish, so she is not safe. Separated from her parents, she rescues her neighbours’ two-year-old daughter Nora and escapes to a village, where she is given a new name and pretends to be Catholic to escape Nazi capture. Miri is at first wary of the convent school nuns, but soon learns that there is much more than meets the eye to these knowledgeable women. One night she is asked to undertake a terrifying task that could allow her to escape. But what about Nora? The person Miri meets that night could save her life. And the person Miri becomes that night could save the lives of many more.
The Night War is a captivating and often funny story that explores history, moral dilemmas and friendships.
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is the author of eighteen previous books, including Fighting Words and the Newbery Honor winners The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won. The mother of two grown-up children, she lives with her husband on a fifty-two-acre horse farm in Tennessee, with three horses, two dogs and too many cats.
kimberlybrubakerbradley.com
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This well-paced novel by Bradley (Fighting Words), set in 1942 Nazi-occupied France, poses thoughtful questions about religious divides and parallels through the experiences of 12-year-old Miriam Schreiber, a German Jew who fled Berlin for Paris with her parents after Kristallnacht. When all the Jews in her neighborhood are rounded up, Miri is separated from her parents and escapes with two-year-old neighbor Nora. Saved by a Catholic nun, the children are sent to Chenonceaux, where the Chateau de Chenonceau straddles the border of occupied France and French-controlled Vichy. Nora is given to a Catholic family, while Miri—pretending to be Christian and going by Marie—is sent to a convent school, where she discovers that two nuns are secretly helping to smuggle Jews across the border. Suffering from fear and anxiety and plagued by guilt for choices she believes she failed to make to save her mother and Nora's father, Miri—aided by a mysterious, imperious elderly woman—takes on risky responsibilities. Miri's highly credible emotions and actions make for a deeply sympathetic character facing increasingly dangerous and suspenseful circumstances; secondary characters are satisfyingly complex. All characters present as white; several are Jewish. A historical note concludes. Ages 9–12.
