It is 1943 and the Ter­ri­er sib­lings — Paul, his younger sis­ter Marie and his old­er sis­ter Sylvie — live in Vichy occu­pied France. Their father is a pris­on­er of war and the occu­py­ing Ger­mans and the French mil­i­tary police enforc­ing the rules are a source of angst for all. In Defi­ance the chil­dren all secret­ly get involved in fight­ing the occu­piers in dif­fer­ent ways. The war and occu­pa­tion take a per­son­al toll on the Ter­ri­ers’ lives. The sto­ry, told in graph­ic nov­el form, address­es dif­fi­cult top­ics includ­ing ques­tions of children’s con­trol in the face of their pow­er­less­ness to the mil­i­tary and oth­er author­i­ties. The Ter­ri­er chil­dren ques­tion if they can trust the author­i­ties as well as neigh­bors, friends and even their rel­a­tives where opin­ions dif­fer and lives are at stake. As the sec­ond in the three-vol­ume Resis­tanceseries, this graph­ic nov­el stands well alone. Jews don’t real­ly have a cen­tral role in the book. The local Jews have already been deport­ed. With an exten­sive his­tor­i­cal and author’s note as well as the vio­lence and fear of World War II, this book is best for mature read­ers who can keep track of com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry lines. Ages 11 and up.