The Children's War
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
This is the story of two children caught in the midst of war.It is 1939 and thirteen-year-old Ilse, half-Jewish, has been sent out of Germany by her Aryan mother to a place of supposed safety. Her journey takes her from the labyrinthine bazaars of Morocco to Paris, a city made hectic at the threat of Nazi invasion. At the same time in Germany, Nicolai, a boy miserably destined for the Nazi Youth movement, finds comfort in the friendship of Ilse’s mother, the nursemaid hired to take care of his young sister. Gripping and poignant, The Children’s War is a stunning novel of wartime lives, of parents and children, of adventure and self-discovery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ilse, a sensitive German girl of mixed parentage (a Jewish father and a Christian mother), is 13 when WWII erupts in this moving, morally nuanced and accomplished historical novel. Terrified that Ilse will be discovered as half-Jewish, her mother, Lore, sends her away to Morocco to live with Ilse's charming Uncle Willy. In her attentive, lively uncle, Ilse finds a father figure she could never have in her real father, Otto, who is a passionate but myopic Bolshevik and ineffectual parent. But soon France is invaded by Germany, Willy enrolls in the French Foreign Legion and Ilse is sent to her father, who is now living in Paris. Although Otto is himself fleeing from the Gestapo, he has made a promise to his estranged wife to look after Ilse. Meanwhile, working as a nursemaid in Hamburg, Lore agonizes over the decisions she's made, wondering whether she'll ever see her daughter again. Nicolai, one of Lore's charges in the privileged household she serves, is the same age as Ilse. Secretly disgusted by the Nazis, Nicolai is mesmerized by Lore and eventually wins her trust, convincing her to reveal her secrets. After Otto is arrested, Ilse learns to fend for herself in Paris and later Marseilles, where she joins the Resistance, and Nicolai copes with starvation and air raids in a Hamburg that increasingly is like a vision of hell. Charlesworth beautifully shows how the small weaknesses of good people are magnified when the stakes are high, creating flawed but deeply sympathetic characters. This is an alternately haunting and tender portrait of the lives of innocents caught in the relentless, random path of war. . This is a strong addition to the genre and an excellent crossover option for older YA readers. 35,000 first printing.
