Last of her family, gone from a locked room,
Nazis seeking her and so many others…
Closed eyes? Despair? Resistance!
Not the same thing at all, Hanneke’s very quiet black-market activity versus being asked to find a Jewish girl in Amsterdam before the German invaders do!
This World War II story invokes the tenacity of hope even as neighbors collaborate with the enemy and long-time friendships falter.
Last year, I walked the Amsterdam streets that Hanneke slipped through like a shadow and that Anne Frank longed to freely walk again…
**kmm
Book info: Girl in the Blue Coat / Monica Hesse. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2016. [author site] [publisher site] [Q &A with author] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My book talk: Struggling to support her parents during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, Hanneke quietly acquires rationed goods for clients, but the teen is startled when she’s asked to find a missing Jewish girl amid constant deportations and disappearances.
How can she locate Mirjam without alerting the authorities?
What caused the young woman to leave the safe house, anyway?
Oh, why did Hanneke encourage her boyfriend Bas to join the Dutch Navy, just before it was crushed by the Nazi invasion?
Cautiously introduced to the student resistance by Bas’ brother Ollie, Hanneke now has even more reason to steer clear of the Germans in her beloved city and the local sympathizers who will betray neighbors to stay in the Nazis’ good graces. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)