Mini Reviews {7} – What I’ve Been Reading Lately

It’s time for another instalment of Mini Reviews, where I basically cheat and put a bunch of reviews into the same post because either a) I’m too lazy to write individual posts for each of them b) they’re too similar to warrant their own posts c) I don’t have enough to say about them to give them their own posts or d) all of the above. In this case they’re all the same series so it just makes sense to give them a post together where I can say a little about each one.

Now (Once #3)
Morris Gleitzman
Puffin Books
2010, 176p
Purchased personal copy

Now is set in the present day (the present day being 2009 in this case) and focuses around Black Saturday on 7th February 2009. It’s about Felix’s granddaughter Zelda, named for the Zelda that was so important to him during those war years, a girl who has shaped his life and his existence. Zelda’s parents are off being doctors in Africa or something, so Zelda is living with her elderly grandfather (himself a retired surgeon) whilst they are away.

This was originally supposed to be the finale and end what was going to be a trilogy. It’s now 6 books deep with the seventh (and supposedly final now) book to be released next year. This would’ve been published at a very important time and I think it would give middle grade readers the chance to experience, process and realise what happens during incredibly destructive fires. My son has read this (he’s 11, he was six months old during Black Saturday but he’s heard it referenced a lot) and he found it very confronting but also really interesting and like it gave him an understanding of that day that he wouldn’t really get just from hearing us talk about it to him. I really enjoyed this one, I quite liked the skip forward to see that Felix is living in Australia although he certainly even now, still has some PTSD issues after the war.

8/10

Book #150 of 2019

After (Once #4)
Morris Gleitzman
Puffin Books
2012, 209p
Purchased personal copy

In the 4th instalment of this series, we return to Europe and where we left Felix at the end of the second book, basically hiding in Gabriek’s barn. It’s been two years and he’s spent nearly all that time down there, which has resulted in muscle wastage and his legs not growing correctly. In this book, Felix gets involved with the Polish resistance and we journey through them trying to take something back from the Nazis as well as experience the “end” of World War II.

This for me, was the most heartbreaking of all the books so far (and that’s probably saying something). They’ve all been quite distressing in various ways – Felix has lost so much and he keeps finding hope and then suffering terrible grief. This was the absolute epitome of that for me. Felix finds something so precious, something that he thought was lost to him, but only briefly. And I spent that part of the book pretty much sobbing because it was so traumatic and at the same time, it was so heartbreakingly lovely in a way, that he was able to get something in the way of closure from one of the people that loved him the most.

Goddamn.

9/10

Book #152 of 2019

Soon (Once #5)
Morris Gleitzman
Puffin Books
2015, 208p
Purchased personal copy

The war is over, but that doesn’t mean that there’s peace or anything close to it. Sometimes it’s easy to think that the end of actual fighting and Nazis putting Jewish people in death camps means that everything will go back to ‘normal’. But for a lot of Europe, there is no longer a normal. Instead the Nazis might have been defeated but that doesn’t mean that they’re all gone. It doesn’t meant that there aren’t still people out there that believe in that way still and it definitely doesn’t mean that anyone is safe. Poland is a fractured land, there’s a thriving black market and there’s danger at every turn. Felix draws some ire from several different directions because let’s face it, it’s Felix and the kid seems to have a knack for finding trouble.

There’s more connections for Felix to make here and also more heartbreak. Felix keeps on keeping on but it’s getting harder to read the cycle of him suffering these losses. I know these books probably aren’t supposed to be read so close together and perhaps they feel a bit samey because I’ve done that. The previous one was so good, even though it was so sad but this one didn’t reach those heights for me. It was good but seemed a bit meandering. I understand I think, what Gleitzman is trying to show – that the end of the war doesn’t make things ‘better’ in a lot of ways and these countries are so damaged that they can’t just go back to normal life and especially not to the life they had before the war. It just didn’t have the same impact on me.

8/10

Book #161 of 2019

Maybe (Once #6)
Morris Gleitzman
Puffin Books
2017, 240p
Copy courtesy Penguin Books AUS

This is the 6th and most recent novel of the series and how I was introduced to it. I was sent a copy for review two years ago but I never got around to reading it because it was 6 in a series and I hadn’t read the others. So I kept it on a shelf and I’m glad I did, considering that my son has jumped right into the series and it was just one less we had to purchase.

But oy. This was a sharp dip in quality for me. And I’m not sure how much is because of what I talked about in my review of the previous book, about how I’m reading them quite close together. But I definitely did not feel that this book had the powerful impact nor the strong storyline of most of its predecessors. In fact some parts were downright ridiculous (not going to spoil I’ll say 7 months pregnant person + parachute and that should be enough). Felix makes his way to Australia and pretty much every person he meets in Australia is a complete idiot. Look we have as many idiots as the next country but did he have to meet so many of them all in a row? Also people keep wanting to kill him and it’s just starting to feel all a bit over the top. I want to learn about Felix getting his medical degree and forging his career but….unfortunately this book did quiet a bit to dim my enthusiasm of the series.

6/10

Book #163 of 2019

Review: Then by Morris Gleitzman

Then (Once #2)
Morris Gleitzman
Puffin Books
2008, 182p
Purchased personal copy

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}:

Felix and Zelda have escaped the train to the death camp, but where do they go now? They’re two runaway kids in Nazi-occupied Poland. Danger lies at every turn of the road.

With the help of a woman named Genia and their active imaginations, Felix and Zelda find a new home and begin to heal, forming a new family together. But can it last?

Morris Gleitzman’s winning characters will tug at readers’ hearts as they struggle to survive in the harsh political climate of Poland in 1942. Their lives are difficult, but they always remember what matters: family, love, and hope.

I didn’t intend to read the second in this series so soon. But the first book ends on such a cliffhanger and these are so short and easy to read as an adult and my son was asking me “Are you going to read Then now Mum? Are you? When are you going to read Then?” because he wanted to talk about it so I ended up picking it up the day after I finished Once. 

So this book picks up literally right after the end of Once. Felix and Zelda and several others were on a train to a ‘death camp’ when they were able to escape by jumping off and rolling. It’s a bit of a lottery – if you survive the fall (the trains must not go very fast in order for anyone to survive these falls) the Nazis also have people stationed on the roof with guns to shoot survivors. So you kind of have to jump, roll, play dead and hope. For Felix and Zelda, they are two of the lucky ones in that they survive and don’t get shot. But now they’re in unfamiliar territory and they’re very much targets. It’s also hard to know who is friendly and who is foe because there is a reward for turning over Jewish people to the Nazis. Even if you find someone that offers you food and shelter, they may just be planning to lure you in before collecting the reward.

But Felix and Zelda do get lucky again – they’re found by Genia, who admits she doesn’t like Jewish people but she hates the Nazis even more. She was a farmer, although the Nazis took most of her produce. Her husband is away fighting in the war and Genia disguises them and educates them about life under Nazi rule. The things they must do, the things they must say, the ways in which they must act. She invents new backgrounds for them, gives them new names (Wilhelm and Violetta, continuing the theme of the books that Felix likes) and peroxides their hair so that they might pass as her German niece and nephew, come to live with her after the death of their mother. It’s important they must remember to do and behave as she has instructed, which for young children is really, really difficult.

Especially for Zelda. Poor Zelda, I was equal parts frustrated by her and aching for her in this book. She’s so young – about six. My youngest just turned eight, so I have to wind him back a couple of years and try and place him in this situation and imagine how he might act. Kids just have no filter a lot of the time. They say what pops into their head and it can be really hard for them to stifle that urge, even when they know what they say will get them into trouble. This is that situation, times about a million. Zelda is also dealing with the conflicting feelings she has about losing her parents and what she discovered about them. Felix keeps trying to get her to remember the good times but Zelda is really struggling with that and her attitude also means that she’s pretty incapable of being subservient and respectful when Nazis and soldiers are around. She sticks her tongue out, she pulls faces, she stares at them directly, she makes comments. On one hand, it’s like ok Zelda go for it. You’re an orphan because of this, your friends will die because of this (Zelda isn’t Jewish so she has this kind of get out of jail free card but then she does things like bite Nazis). She’s absolutely full of fire and personality but she does get a bit much at times when all they’re trying to do is survive. You just have to keep remembering how young and damaged she is. In some ways, it’s admirable she is who she is. She doesn’t change herself, make herself less in order to become what they expect, how they want children or followers to behave. But on the other hand I’m like “everyone is going to die if she doesn’t stop”. And perhaps she doesn’t quite grasp that, even though she’s seen people die. Perhaps she does and she doesn’t care. Felix though, who just wants to protect her, for them to stay together and alive, finds this incredibly stressful. And he’s only 10.

These two books have had horrific things happen throughout. Felix and Zelda have seen terrible things. Zelda lost her parents, Felix has come to ugly realisations about the fate of his. They’ve seen people beaten and killed, they’ve escaped Nazi death trains. But I was still unprepared for the ending of this book. I actually had to read it several times to make sure it was saying what I thought it was saying. How could this happen? And yet, it was probably always going to happen. But that didn’t make me any less traumatised by it. Even with everything I’d read, I was still shocked by it. And I knew that I’d be having discussions about what had happened with my older son too (and we did). These books aren’t graphic, but they don’t pull any punches either. They are the best and worst of this time seen through a child’s eyes for other children to experience. And as an adult, I’m really appreciating it too.

9/10

Book #149 of 2019

Review: Once by Morris Gleitzman

Once (Once #1)
Morris Gleitzman
Puffin Books
2005, 160p
Purchased personal copy

Burb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}:

nce I escaped from an orphanage to find Mum and Dad. Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house. Once I made a Nazi with a toothache laugh.

My name is Felix. This is my story.

A story of children in the Holocaust, Once is poignant and powerful without being frightening or graphic. With his gentle and utterly alive manner, Gleitzman reads the tale of Felix, a Jewish boy who runs away from the convent where his parents had him hidden and roams the countryside with an orphaned girl until they find their way to the cellar of a print shop in the Warsaw ghetto, where an old dentist has been protecting lost children.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, my oldest son is an excellent reader. However he’s not what I’d call an enthusiastic reader. Most of his commitment to reading comes because he’s been told that he’s good at it and like most kids, he likes praise. He’s 11 and in grade 5 but he’s already graduated out of the reading assessment grading they use and has been assessed at reading at a 14/15yo level. Now that he knows he can read at this advanced level, he wants to read a lot of pretty intense books. Some I’ve agreed to, others I’ve thought might be best to revisit in a year or two. I’m not about censoring reading but at the same time, I want to make sure that he’s actually able to understand and deal with the content. He’s not exactly what I’d call mature for his age, so it’s a fine balance of maintaining his engagement (because kid books are ‘boring’) but not sacrificing comprehension and mental fallout. He’s really, really interested in World War II and asks a lot of questions about how it happened and why. At his age, it’s difficult for him to grasp what happened to Jewish people in Europe – not the actual acts but the why. I don’t remember how he came across this series, I think we were in a bookstore and he was asking me “Can I read this? Can I read this? What about this? Can I read this?” and he picked up Once, the first book in this series. I hadn’t read any of them but I have read other Morris Gleitzman books (probably as a kid, the same age my son is now!) and I’d heard good things about this series. Plus I’d been sent the 6th one for review about three years ago (which I hadn’t read obviously, given that it was #6 in a series). So we bought the first book and he absolutely roared through it. He’s read the second, is reading the third and used a gift voucher from his birthday to buy books 4&5. He’s been asking me if I’m going to read them “now that we have the series Mum” and because he’s so enthusiastic about it, I couldn’t say no. It’s something he wants to engage in and it’s not Minecraft or Fortnite, so I’m in.

The book begins with Felix, a young Jewish boy in Poland whose parents have left him in an orphanage. Felix isn’t aware of why they’ve left him here but an adult reader can guess pretty easily where Felix’s parents probably are now. In the beginning of the book, Felix is either charmingly or annoyingly naive, take your pick. But he’s also young and kids don’t learn this stuff until someone shows it to them. And when he escapes from the orphanage, thinking his parents are in danger and he must save them, he slowly has the wool stripped from his childish gaze in the most heartbreaking of ways. At first, he tries to ration away what he sees or hears as some sort of benign event – ie an abandoned house with food still on the table means the family were just excited to leave for an adventure, the nearby gunshots mean they are hunting. It’s a strong denial that I think children would probably indulge in psychologically in order to preserve their state of mind. Eventually Felix sees things that he cannot ration away and he struggles to understand why this is happening and why the Nazis hate Jewish people and Jewish children so much. He is also forced to come to terms with the probable reality of the fate of his parents, especially when he learns about the trains to the death camps. Along the way Felix meets the best and worst that humanity has to offer. Now for me, a lot of what is happening is not particularly subtle, but I think in terms of for kids my son’s age, a lot of the message is more gently implied. It doesn’t shy away from some of the more gruesome and depressing parts of this time period but it’s showing them through a child’s eyes as well.

I think what I like about this sort of book is that it’s a way to promote discussion. I know my son has had quite a few questions for me and this I think has enabled him to explore empathy on a whole new level. He has a great thirst for knowledge which is good, I always like encouraging that but I think this gives him more than just straight information, it gives him a chance to understand the experience. It’s one of those scenarios where you’d like to be able to say, this never happened, it’s purely made up. But even though this is fiction, it’s loosely based on real events and we know just how horrific some of the stories and experiences were.

This was a quick but quite intense read and I’ll definitely continue with the series. I am looking forward to being able to discuss more of the series with my son and get his experience too. He will see the books differently to me (the way they’re intended probably, given he’s in the target age range). It’s a fine line, trying to encourage him to read without feeling like he’s being forced. I want both of my kids to enjoy reading so when they find something that engages them, I’m always so glad for it. The fact that I can enjoy these too and being able to talk about it with him, is just a bonus.

9/10

Book #146 of 2019