Chil­dren’s

Resis­tance: Book 1

  • Review
By – October 10, 2011
Paul and Marie, two French chil­dren, live in a small vil­lage in the French Free Zone dur­ing World War II. Their father is being held by the Ger­mans, and they wor­ry about his where­abouts and his wel­fare through­out the book. In addi­tion, t hey are extreme­ly wor­ried about their Jew­ish friend, Hen­ri, whose par­ents go miss­ing sud­den­ly and mys­te­ri­ous­ly. While try­ing to hide him, they are recruit­ed into the French Resis­tance move­ment. They bond with Resis­tance mem­bers and expe­ri­ence human per­son­al­i­ty quirks they might not have been exposed to had the times been nor­mal. Even in the Resis­tance there is brav­ery, and at the same time there is pet­ti­ness. The sto­ry con­tains sus­pense, secret codes, and ele­ments of spy sto­ries, as our pro­tag­o­nists work on trick­ing the Ger­man occu­piers. Through­out this graph­ic nov­el, Paul’s sepia-toned draw­ings are inter­spersed with the illustrator’s col­or illus­tra­tions. His pic­tures form a visu­al thread that read­ers can use to fol­low the action. A two-page Author’s Note explains the French Resis­tance and con­tains an overview of free and occu­pied France dur­ing World War II. This book is the first vol­ume of a pro­ject­ed tril­o­gy. Grades 7 and up.
Shelly Feit has an M.L.S. and a Sixth-year Spe­cial­ist’s Cer­tifi­cate in infor­ma­tion sci­ence. She is the library direc­tor and media spe­cial­ist at the Mori­ah School in Engle­wood, NJ.

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