Guide/Reviews Database
To continue reading, please subscribe to hbook.com.
An individual subscription is just $72 and gets you a full year of unlimited access to everything hbook.com has to offer plus tens of thousands of reviews of recommended books published in the United States for young people. Subscribe today!
Our Guide/Reviews Database section is fully searchable by author/illustrator, title, subject, bibliographic data, rating, and keyword. Features include useful, timely, and topical booklists—curated by Horn Book editors and updated frequently—as well as the ability to save all your favorite titles to “My Library.”
Log In
Don't have a Horn Book Account?
Register Now
Register Now
History, Modern--World War II
734 Reviews
(2)
4-6
Narrator Simona is eight years old in 1940, and her younger sister five, when they leave their home outside Rome for Tokyo--their father has been hired as chef at the Italian embassy. The girls must quickly learn a new language and new customs--and although they come to love Japan, as Westerners their friends are few. As WWII approaches and then intensifies, life in Tokyo deteriorates, with food and clothing scarcities; classmates' brothers and fathers lost to war; school concerned with propaganda rather than learning. Then, in 1943, Italy surrenders--and Simona's family is now the enemy. From here, the novel becomes a survival story. The girls are separated from their father and sent to a starvation-level internment camp; escape and are rescued by a household of anti-war activists; they return, after the women's home is raided, to Tokyo, where they find refuge with a blind washerwoman; and finally, fatefully, end up in a Catholic mission in Hiroshima. Throughout, what saves them are Simona's strength and determination but also the sisters' assimilation into and respect for Japanese culture: at the camp, their politeness earns them life-saving tidbits from the kitchen; needing to buy train tickets back to Tokyo, they speak the language so well they pass for Japanese. Simona's eight-year-old voice is the same as her adult voice (the novel ends with a final chapter set in 1965), but readers may overlook this quibble as they immerse themselves in Napoli's story, told with immediacy, compassion, and nuance. A note describing the author's research and an extensive bibliography are appended.
Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
January, 2021
(2)
K-3
Translated by Annette Appel.
Illustrated by
Avi Ofer.
A teddy bear on display in Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, narrates this picture book based on a true story from the Holocaust. The stuffed bear recalls his journey with young owner Fred from their home in Delft, Holland, to Fred's grandfather's house in Amsterdam--the family has been warned that "people would come and force us to leave"--and eventually to a stranger's home for the duration of the war. Short lines of text are surrounded by plenty of white space. The loose-lined, digital illustrations are similarly spare, though the light brown of the visibly well-loved Bear and the yellow of the stars sewn onto Jewish characters' clothing stand out. That the events are seen through innocent eyes allows for the posing of basic questions: "Why did we have to hide?" and "Why couldn't [Fred] tell anyone who he was? Did he do something bad?" A historical note at the front provides more specific information about the Holocaust, making the book useful as a discussion starter for those new to this part of history. Back matter includes an author's note and a letter from "Fred's Bear" (complete with photo), establishing both title characters as real figures.
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
March, 2020
(2)
YA
Immediately following WWII, sixteen-year-old German girl Katja and her sister Hilde become refugees and orphans after a Soviet soldier shoots their mother, blaming her for something Katja said. Katja and Hilde find a place to stay with a farming family, telling the family that the girls' mother is alive and will come to collect them soon. As Katja contends with, and attempts to process, more violence from the Soviet army (including the rape of a secondary character), perpetrated in the name of vengeance, she is dismayed to learn about the extent of the atrocities committed by her own country during the war. For example, she (perhaps willfully, as Hilde suggests) hadn't fully grasped the danger from the Nazis in sneaking to her beloved lessons at her Jewish music teacher's home. Barker sheds light on a rarely portrayed aspect of WWII's aftermath (see also Maria Kiely's Which Way Is Home?, reviewed on page 140). Her expressive writing helps bring readers into Katja's head ("My arms shook. I held them as high as I could, as if higher meant Yes, I surrender even more"), though Katja's naiveté and continued impulsivity, including vandalizing a Soviet officer's car, might have been more believable and sympathetic in a younger character. An author's note discusses the time period and Barker's reasons for writing about it: "to ask tough questions and face unsettling truths."
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
July, 2020
(2)
4-6
Translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger.
Illustrated by
Claire Fauvel.
This graphic novel (adapted from a novel by Billet and inspired by her mother's life) follows teenage Rachel Cohen from one place to another in WWII France. By changing her name to Catherine Colin and hiding her Jewish identity, she is able to live at schools and an orphanage as well as with families throughout the occupied and free zones, moving whenever Nazi suspicion encroaches--and always documenting her experiences with her Rolleiflex camera. Though the story covers Rachel/Catherine's adolescence, the smoothly translated text is clear enough, and gentle enough in its explanations of the Holocaust, to be comprehensible to readers younger than the character. Themes of self-expression--Catherine's photography is a rare constant in a life overwhelmed by change--will likely resonate with a wide variety of readers. The back matter is pitched to explain this story's context to young people with little or no background knowledge about WWII or the Holocaust, though readers familiar with the basics may learn something new about this specific setting. Fauvel's borderless, color-saturated panels shift in palette by location, with red-and-black darkroom scenes standing out, particularly against the black-and-white photos produced in them.
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
March, 2020
(2)
YA
Chee follows up her successful fantasy trilogy (The Reader and sequels) with this very different work of historical fiction, drawing on her personal family and cultural history for a story of World War II. Beginning in March 1942, three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, fourteen young people--all but one from San Francisco's Japantown--chronicle, in interlinked stories, their lives over the course of the next three years. Their first-person, present-tense narratives depict a multiplicity of thoughts, feelings, and experiences, particularly regarding the unjust treatment of Japanese American citizens before, during, and after incarceration in internment camps. The result is slightly disorienting as characters come and go, but the overall effect is nuanced and kaleidoscopic. Gaman is a Japanese word for endurance, a dignified response to adversity; it's a characteristic most of these young adults exhibit in one form or another: "The ability to hold your pain and bitterness inside you and not let them destroy you. To make something beautiful through your anger, or with your anger, and neither erase it nor let it define you. To suffer. And to rage. And to persevere." Various graphic elements connect the story to its historical period (drawings, photographs, maps, postcards, telegrams, and newspaper articles), while the author's note grounds it in Chee's extensive research and family experience.
Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
September, 2020
(2)
4-6
In free-verse poems, Frost tells the story of Henry, deafened by disease in 1937 at age four. Because Henry is deemed "unteachable" by the School for the Deaf, his family is pressured to consign him at age six to a residential institution for the "feeble-minded," a dumping ground for those with a variety of cognitive and physical issues. Through his own intelligence and good nature, Henry makes friends and survives this place of scarcity and lovelessness. And once the United States enters World War II, a compassionate conscientious objector joins the staff, bringing hope for Henry's return to his family. Frost's short poems sketch Henry's story through clips of his experiences, conveying his limited understanding of what is going on around him. But she also frames his experience within a larger context--of the family that is too poor and cowed to care for him, and of the role conscientious objectors played during the war. This is a quick read, full of historical richness and glimpses of the cruelty and abuse so common in the institutions of the era. Frost's interpretation is softened by the hopeful conclusion of Henry's return home and his introduction to American Sign Language.
Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2020
Gaddy, K. R.
Flowers in the Gutter: The True Story of the Edelweiss Pirates, Teenagers Who Resisted the Nazis
(2)
YA
The Edelweiss Pirates were groups of German youth who protested the Nazi regime through actions ranging from simple mischief and propaganda all the way up to sabotage. Because they were generally poor--and poorly organized--they, according to Gaddy, have not been properly recognized by scholars as being part of the resistance movement. This book aims to shed light on their efforts by weaving together the stories of three young people--Gertrud, Fritz, and Jean--in and around the city of Cologne from 1932 to 1945. Over those dozen-plus years, conflicts escalate, from them pulling pranks on the Hitler Youth to their prolonged interrogation at the hands of the SS. The three teens convey their unique but shared experiences, rendering a history that is at once familiar and new. Drawing on primary sources such as memoirs, interviews, government documents, and archival photographs, Gaddy unflinchingly chronicles Germany's harrowing and inexorable embrace of fascism and the brave young people who struggled against its tyranny. A final chapter leaps forward in time to discuss the current legacy of the Edelweiss Pirates. This book stands next to Hoose's The Boys Who Challenged Hitler (rev. 7/15) and Freedman's We Will Not Be Silent (rev. 5/16) as a testament to those young people who resisted the Nazis. A "Persons of Interest" list begins the book; an author's note, source notes, bibliography, and index are appended.
Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
March, 2020
(2)
K-3
Illustrated by
Britta Teckentrup.
The titular dwelling was the weekend home of Harding's great-grandparents in Germany, built by his great-grandfather nearly a century ago. Readers experience the peace and idyll of the place, inhabited by "a kind doctor and his cheery wife" and their four children; several spreads of lyrical text and serene illustrations depict a warm-hearted, carefree, sun-dappled setting. It's not long, however, before the Nazis descend, forcing the family from their home. A new family arrives, "carrying suitcases and musical instruments and love," but the war soon means that they, too, must leave rather than fight for the Nazis. The house is once again empty--then it's temporarily used as a shelter for those fleeing persecution; then it's witness to the Berlin Wall's rise and fall (and inhabited by a man who informed on his neighbors); then it falls into disrepair. And then the author arrives and fixes it up "until it shone like new...Once again the house by the lake was happy." An appended author's note very helpfully fills in the blanks of the occasionally vague main text. We learn more about the real people who moved in and out of the dwelling (it is here that we learn Harding's family was Jewish; and more about that spying inhabitant), and find out that it now serves as a "center for education and reconciliation." Teckentrup's evocative textured and layered mixed-media illustrations beautifully reflect the bucolic setting in times of both familial repose and, chillingly, unthinkable evil.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
September, 2020
(2)
YA
Hesse (Girl in the Blue Coat; The War Outside) explores the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust for one Polish Jewish eighteen-year-old. Zofia, like so many, was wrenched from her family in the concentration camps. Now liberated from Gross-Rosen, she is desperate for news of her younger brother, Abek. After months of recovery in the hospital, she goes back "home," where she is received with hostility by neighbors. Restless and unsettled, she makes her way to a displaced persons' camp in Germany, where she spends time with others who have also suffered terrible loss--and celebrates small happinesses with them. She develops feelings for a young man named Josef, whose past remains a mystery; and finally receives word of Abek, whose story is slowly revealed. Hesse's characters are believable and sympathetic. "My mind is a sieve," says Zofia, and occasional interspersed chapters, in italics, reveal details about her past--and about memories she may or may not have lost and/or recovered. Difficult questions about her present ("'What if my brother is dead?' Josef stares at me...'What if he is, Zofia? Do you think you could find a way to live the rest of your life?'") and future (should she join a group immigrating to Eretz Israel?) underscore the challenges of those who survived unimaginable horrors and must manage to keep living. An appended "Note on History and Research" tells more about the author's motivation and methodology.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
July, 2020
(2)
4-6
On page one, eleven-year-old Julie steals a baby from the steps of the public library in a 1940s Long Island beach town. The questions that cluster around this action--why? whose baby is it? what will Julie do with it?--move offstage as we are introduced to the events of the immediately preceding months. Through three alternating voices--Julie, her little sister Martha, and Bruno, the boy next door--we encounter secrets and mysteries. Why has Bruno's older brother, away at war, stopped writing home? Why have Julie and Bruno fallen out? Who is the vaguely familiar rich woman who has turned up in town? Why is Bruno planning to sneak off to New York City? The mosaic pieces gradually come together to form a cohesive story of bereavement, war on the home front, friendship, kindness, and the energy of a new life. The multiple voices are distinctive, authentic, and equally inviting. Each child is a slightly unreliable reporter, a narrative technique that will keep readers on their toes as they try to sort everything out. There's a touch of gawky middle-grade romance, a poignant unanswered question, and even a cameo appearance by Eleanor Roosevelt in this sweet summer story.
Reviewer: Sarah Ellis
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2020
(2)
YA
This graphic novel blends historical fact and science fiction into an enthralling time-travel tale. An imagined version of debut author Hughes's teenage self is suddenly "displaced" to her late grandmother's youth during World War II, following her grandmother's family as they are forced from San Francisco first to the nearby Tanforan Assembly Center, then to Utah's Topaz Relocation Center. The skillful illustrations, with muted colors and drab backgrounds, emphasize the degradations of prison life (constant surveillance, shoddy housing) and the efforts people took to make it livable (gardens, dances). Hughes successfully employs her own family history, along with characters and story lines beyond it, to show the emotional conflicts Japanese Americans experienced. She also explores how the memories of those emotional struggles contributed to hidden generational trauma: a roommate speaks up about the rights of Japanese Americans at the prison camp yet shames Kiku's request to learn the Japanese language; the inmates experience fear over a loyalty questionnaire; they face uncertainty about restarting lives from scratch after the camps are closed. The story draws parallels to current events and encourages readers to remember and recontextualize this painful part of American history. Back matter includes an author's note, photos, glossary, and reading list. Pair with George Takei's They Called Us Enemy (rev. 9/19).
Reviewer: Megan Lambert
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
September, 2020
(2)
YA
Illustrated by
Kenard Pak.
In a poetry collection that's as much structure as style and theme, Lowry considers two events: the bombings of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. In the book's first section, poems about the author's connections to Pearl Harbor (she was born in Hawaii and lived there before the war) are interspersed with others commemorating some of the sailors who served on the USS Arizona. (The presence of an appended bibliography seems to indicate that these sailors and their experiences are not fictional, but there's no statement to that effect.) The second section, about Hiroshima, takes a similar tack, with poems inspired by Lowry's postwar childhood in Tokyo included among others devoted to the experiences of those in Japan on August 6th, 1945. "She was a young girl with / a singed uniform, and / a lifetime / of nightmares." A third section brings together the surprising link, discovered almost fifty years after the war, between the little Lois of the first section and a certain Koichi Seii introduced in the second. (We all learned about it at the 1994 Newbery-Caldecott Banquet.) There's a lot of scaffolding for such a slim book, but the poems themselves, a mix of free verse and (sometimes questionable) rhyme, are agreeably spare; the best are the triolets that close each section: "We could not be friends. Not then. Not yet. / Until the cloud dispersed and cleared, / we needed time to mend, forget. / We could not be friends. Not then. Not yet..." Modest pencil sketches throughout reflect and enhance the elegiac mood.
Reviewer: Roger Sutton
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
July, 2020
(2)
YA
In 1939, instigating World War II, Germany and subsequently the Soviet Union invaded Poland and divided it between themselves along the Curzon Line. But Germany later swept past the Line, attacked Soviet forces, and set off bitter warfare, making the Polish region of Galicia and the city of Lwów a battleground. Enter Tolya Anatoliyovych Korolenko, a seventeen-year-old sniper with the First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army, and Aleksey Yevhenov, a Ukrainian nationalist. Tolya's mother, a Catholic Pole, and his Ukrainian peasant father have been murdered, and Aleksey is the son of Yevhen Kobryn, a jailed Ukrainian nationalist leader. McCrina places the dual and asynchronous narratives of Tolya and Aleksey against a complicated historical backdrop involving the German Army, the Red Army, Polish Resistance, Ukrainian nationalists, the UPA (the military arm of the Ukrainian nationalists), the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), and all the people caught in the winds of war. Though readers will need to make good use of the lists of characters and military organizations in the back matter to keep straight who's fighting whom and when, lively dialogue and exciting action sequences (with graphic violence) will pull them through the story, told with the same intelligence and scrupulous attention to historical detail as the novels of Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity, rev. 1/12) and Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray, rev. 5/11).
Reviewer: Dean Schneider
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2020
(2)
4-6
Translated by Denise Muir.
Viktor and Nadya are twelve-year-old twins living in Leningrad during World War II. In defiance of the non-aggression pact, Germany invades Russia and lays siege to the city. As children are evacuated, Viktor and Nadya are put on separate trains. Nadya's train is stopped and the children dispersed; Nadya and several companions find refuge on an abandoned island fortress, while Viktor ends up in a gulag. After he escapes, he incorrectly learns that Nadya's train was bombed with no survivors but refuses to believe it. Eventually, Viktor does find Nadya through some fortuitous coincidences, and together they are able to unravel a stunning tale of treason and betrayal at the highest levels of Soviet leadership. The book's format is innovative and adds immediacy. It's written as a series of journal notebooks--Nadya's entries are in navy blue, while Viktor's are in cherry red, complemented by maps and photographs in the same color palettes--which are now being used as evidence to determine whether the children have committed crimes against the Soviet Union. The officer reviewing their case has ominously written notes and questions in the margin; he has also re-ordered parts to aid the narrative flow. Attentive readers will be richly rewarded by this gripping historical mystery.
Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
January, 2021
(2)
YA
In 1940s Vichy France, a remote mountain-plateau village known for sheltering refugees fleeing Nazi persecution houses a unique and innovative high school that draws students from all over France and beyond. Many of the students secretly work for the resistance, the maquis, which becomes much riskier after the arrival of Inspector Perdant from the national police, there to "identify evidence of illegal activities and unregistered Jews, foreigners, communists, and undesirables." Preus (Heart of a Samurai, rev. 9/10; Shadow on the Mountain, rev. 11/12) weaves the experiences of students Philippe (who smuggles refugees over the border into Switzerland), Celeste (who carries messages for the maquis), Jean-Paul (who runs a sophisticated document-forging operation), and others into a tale of danger and bravery, luck and wits, purpose and community, and even occasional humor (some pretty on-point Nazi jokes). Chapters alternate among characters, with Preus always circling back to Perdant's constant spying and dogged pursuit of arrests, which amps up the suspense (somewhat undermined, however, by how easily local farm boy Jules outwits him at every turn). An extensive epilogue informs readers about the real people upon whom the novel's characters are based; and about concentration camps, the Boy Scouts and their relationship to the maquis, and the actual high school L'Ecole Nouvelle Cévenole in the village of La Chambon. A bibliography and a pronunciation guide complete the book.
Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
March, 2020
(1)
4-6
Shulevitz was just four when the Nazis invaded Poland in September of 1939, forcing his family members to flee their homeland. Thus began nearly a decade of displacement, discrimination, and hunger, as the Jewish refugee family endured the horrors of war and a tenuous peace, moving to northern Russia, Turkestan, back to Poland, and then to Germany, before settling in Paris in 1947. Despite their often-illegal status, the boy's parents tried to scrape together a living, working any jobs they could find. Throughout the moves and various illnesses associated with subsistence living, young Uri was sustained by his mother's stories and his greatest pleasure and solace--his near-obsessive love of drawing. This memoir, Shulevitz's (Caldecott Medalist for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship and three-time Honoree) first foray beyond the picture-book format, is heavily illustrated with the artist's lively and expressive grayscale renderings (and occasional black-and-white photographs), punctuating and illuminating some of the most poignant and emotional moments in the narrative. In a number of sections, he enhances the storytelling via a series of dramatic graphic panels. Though touching on many dark and serious topics, this story is totally focused on the fears, triumphs, and sensibilities of a child. It is truly a portrait of an artist as a young man thrust into a maelstrom of a world gone mad and relying on chance to decide his fate. This thoroughly engrossing memoir will sit comfortably on a shelf with Peter Sís's The Wall (rev. 9/07) and Allen Say's Drawing from Memory[cf21 (rev. 9/11).
(1)
4-6
Illustrated by
Akira Kusaka.
Each evening Sachiko's family gathers around their table in Nagasaki, Japan. Before the Second World War, Grandmother's bowl is the centerpiece of every meal, filled with squid, eel, octopus, and udon noodles; as the war rages on, it contains only wheat balls in boiled water. Sachiko is just six years old when the atomic bomb drops. She survives the bomb, which kills three of her brothers--one immediately, and two later from radiation exposure. Surviving family returns to Nagasaki two years later to find their house in ashes but Grandmother's bowl unharmed--a symbol of survival. Stelson (Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor's Story, rev. 1/17) builds her debut picture book around this one element of Sachiko's story. Kusaka's illustrations effectively focus on Sachiko's family and the ways they used the bowl to create an orderly family life even in the midst of, and after, a devastating war. The ceramic bowl is the focal point of many of the uncluttered digital paintings: placed in the center of a square table, surrounded with formally arranged chopsticks and dishes. This image is repeated through the book, providing the reader with breathing space amidst dark images of war. The bomb itself is powerfully shown as a ball of fire in a series of spreads, with red light glowing through heavy black clouds. The third-person narrative's calm, direct tone and the hopeful ending make this difficult, sophisticated material manageable for older elementary-school and middle-school children. An author's note includes additional information about Japan during the war, international efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, and a brief bibliography.
Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
July, 2020
(3)
K-3
Illustrated by
Marie Lafrance.
Life in Munich is difficult for Anneliese's family in the months after World War II. Food shortages, streets strewn with rubble, and no library access compound grief over Papa's death for refusing to "follow orders." But when Anneliese and her little brother happen upon a "great hall" filled with children's books and a lady who reads them aloud, both children find happiness in the midst of trauma. Five pages at the end introduce Jella Lepman and her international children's book exhibit that traveled Germany after the war. The digitally colored graphite illustrations are equally adept at conveying the deprivation of post-war Germany and the power of stories to unlock hope.
Reviewer: Kitty Flynn
(2)
4-6
Translated by Laura Watkinson.
In a village in the Netherlands, in the winter of 1944–45, teen Michiel van Beusekom becomes involved in anti-Nazi resistance activities--hiding and feeding a wounded British airman, smuggling two Jewish men out of the area--all the while knowing that someone in the village is betraying the cause. The pace is fast; the action is riveting; the mystery of the traitor's identity is compelling. But this is no "adventure novel": it's about war and fear and deprivation, told from personal experience (the book is based on the author's own boyhood). As such, it has a strong anti-war message: "Don't be fooled, Michiel, by the romance of war, heroism, sacrifice, excitement, adventure. War means injuries, grief, torture, imprisonment, hunger, hardship, injustice. There's nothing romantic about it." First published in 1973, this Dutch classic has been in print in Holland continuously since its publication--and deservedly so.
Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
July, 2020
(2)
4-6
As a result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and FDR's ensuing Executive Order 9066, eight-year-old Mae Yanagi and her family were uprooted from their home in Hayward, California, and forced to relocate to Topaz, a so-called Japanese internment camp (see appended note on terminology) in the desert of central Utah. Mae's third-grade class kept a journal that year, and her journal is used as the starting point to explore, in eleven chapters, what it was like to live in Topaz, especially from a child's viewpoint. Tunnell (The Children of Topaz) touches on such topics as holiday observances, medical care, pets, recreation, and religious worship. The reminiscences of Mae and her classmates are aptly woven into the narrative, and the resiliency of these children is inspiring. Numerous black-and-white photographs as well as color reproductions of the journal entries--there's something on nearly every page--break up the text, while the ample back matter includes an enlightening chapter-long author's note, photo notes and credits, source notes, a glossary, a selected bibliography, and an index.
Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2020
734 reviews