Alexis' Book Blog

The Boy Who Dared

A Novel Based on a True Story

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Published Scholastic, 2008

Targeted Audience: Middle-Grade to Young Adult (Ages 10 -14)

5 out of 5 stars

Book Review by Sandra Miller-Louden

Synopsis:

Helmut Hubener is hardly a household name, but if you think of unimaginable courage and an overwhelming desire to right horrible wrongs, Helmut Hubener should be right there at the top of your list.

Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1925, Helmut belonged to the Mormon Church.  He grew up never knowing his father and lived with his mother, his grandparents and two half-brothers.  The entire family was Mormon and as such believed in one’s Christian duty to tell the truth and try to right any wrongs they saw occurring. Helmut was like any other boy who loved adventure and was curious about the world around him.  He dreamed of becoming a Boy Scout; however, when the Nazis came to power, they outlawed Scouting.

Soon Helmut found himself in the Hitler Youth, an organization he was required to join, but almost immediately was at odds with the group and its philosophy.  He soon questioned all the Nazi Doctrines, as well as Adolf Hitler’s supposed interest in peace, while simultaneously invading countries all around Germany.

After finishing middle school in 1941, he began work as an apprentice in a government office.  There in a stuffy, little-used room, Helmut discovers an entire library of banned books.  He’s amazed and can’t resist taking one book home at a time—sneaking it under his shirt, so he can know exactly what the Nazis do not want him to know.

His brother brings home a short-wave radio, also illegal in Germany and punishable by death if the authorities catch them listening to it. Although his brother locks the radio away when he returns to the front, Helmut jimmies the lock and tunes in the BBC.  He is immediately impressed that the British talk openly and honestly about their troop losses.  Helmut knows no such truth exists in Germany where every broadcast focuses on glory to the Fuhrer and hiding bad news. He invites two trusted friends to also listen and eventually decides he must do something to help defeat Hitler.

Helmut begins writing and printing anti-Hitler pamphlets, stuffing them in mailboxes, leaving them on tables and in buses.  When he eventually trusts the wrong person at work, he is turned in and then arrested by the Gestapo—the Secret Police—and tried in a Nazi court.

At 17, Helmut Hubener became the youngest person sentenced to death by Nazi authorities.  On October 17, 1942, Helmut Hubener was beheaded by guillotine in Plotzensee Prison, located in Berlin.  The room where he was executed now holds a stark shrine to his memory—and the memory of all the others who died there.

Why I Liked It:

This book is a chilling reminder that freedom is not free and that our liberties are precious indeed.  Many black and white photos are included in this book and I found myself flipping to them often as I read about Helmut, studying his handsome face—seeing him look hopeful, ready to tackle the world and yet knowing that because he lived his convictions, he was probably doomed.  This is historical fiction at its best.  The author was meticulous in her research, interviewing Helmut’s friends and half-brother; she traveled to Germany to take various pictures included in the book and look up relevant documents pertaining to Helmut’s arrest, trial and execution.

What I Didn’t Like:

There was nothing I really didn’t like, although I thought a glossary of terms would have been helpful.  This book could certainly be read by anyone 10 or older, yet middle-grade children may not know what a swastika is or what jackboots were.  Years ago, I remember a Holocaust survivor lecturing in the public schools—he was amazed that many times students would ask:  “Well, why didn’t you just report the Nazis to the police?”  In the face of such naïveté, I think a glossary of terms and general background would have been helpful.

Why You Should Read It:

If you find yourself reluctant to pick up a non-fiction history book for whatever reason, then your next step should at least be to read historical fiction.  Obviously, the author cannot know word-for-word personal conversations or even specific thoughts of the people at any given time, but she can weave a plausible story based on her research.  Hopefully, the curiosity that springs from reading an accurate historical fiction account will prove to be an incentive for reading more about that era or period in history.

Little Known Fact:

Susan Campbell Bartoletti became so interested in Helmut Hubener after writing her Newbery Honor Award Book, Hitler Youth: Growing Up In Hitler’s Shadow (Scholastic 2005), she researched his life independently, also meeting with and interviewing Hubener’s childhood friends and half-brother.  Ms. Bartoletti’s biological father died in a car accident and she, too, like Helmut had a stepfather when her mother remarried.

“On a Lighter Note” Fact:

Haley Joel Osment is scheduled to play the role of Helmut Hubener in the upcoming film, Truth and Treason.  According to the website, www.truthandtreason.com , it is being filmed in 2010, although there seems to be conflicting information that filming began back in 2007.  Hopefully, the film will be made without any other major delays, as its impact will be profound.

Freddy and Mr. Camphor

By Walter R. Brooks

Book Review by Sandra Miller-Louden

3.5 out of 5 stars

Series Book/Children

Since the Freddy Series is found in the children’s section of the library, we’ll call it a children’s book for simplicity’s sake.  However, let me warn you, this series has a wide appeal for adults as well—as we’ll see later in my review.

If you’re not familiar with this series, here’s a quick overview.  There are 26 books in all written between 1927-1958 and they are all anthropomorphic—in other words, the main characters are all animals and they walk, talk and engage in human activities.  Chief among the animals is Freddy the Pig.  In various books Freddy travels (to Florida in one, to the North Pole in another), he opens a detective agency, starts a bank (First Animal Bank of Centerboro), runs a newspaper, goes aloft in a balloon, fights a critter known as an Ignormus and even becomes a caretaker in a mansion belonging to wealthy C. Jimson Camphor when Mr. Camphor is away on business.

And here is where Freddy and Mr. Camphor begins.  Things get complicated from the get go as destructive rats, crabby toads and loudmouth horseflies show up to derail Freddy’s planned peaceful summer of looking after the mansion, reading and engaging in one of his favorite pastimes, painting.  As if this array of animals isn’t enough, the evil—and smelly—Zebedee Winch and his equally disagreeable son Horace show up again, as they did in the very first Freddy book.  (Freddy and Mr. Camphor is Book #11, written in 1944).

Winch has underlying motives to get Freddy fired (chief among them is Winch would like a good pork dinner) from his job and when that happens, Freddy rallies all his friends from the Bean Family Farm (Freddy’s home base) to help make things right.  We see some old favorites in this book—Jinx the wily cat, Alice and Emma the prissy ducks, Charles the pompous rooster, Mr. & Mrs. Webb (you guessed it, married spiders with ever-so-teeny voices!) and my personal favorites, the Mrs. Wiggins, Wogus and Wurtzberger, three amiable (if slightly plodding) cows.

Certain unyielding themes are present in this series.  There is a firm line drawn between right and wrong.  Even when it could harm him in the short term, Freddy is always honest and tries to do the honorable thing.  If reading this series to a child, an adult can find many “teachable moments” to reinforce a point.  There are also subtle observations which author Brooks makes throughout—observations that undoubtedly will go over a child’s head, but will delight adults.  Brooks has little use for wordy people who say nothing and he makes no bones about the fact that he considers most politicians in that category.  In Chapter One, Mr. Weezer, the president of Centerboro Bank (the human being bank) wears “a pair of nose glasses that always fell off when anyone mentioned a sum of money larger than five dollars.”  The swipes that author Brooks takes are understated, but always entertaining. 

In fact, this series is so entertaining that when the series went out of print during the 1970s, many people mourned their loss and frequented old bookstores to find copies.  From a determined group of fans who stayed in touch with Brooks’ widow, a newsletter began in 1984 and The Friends of Freddy had their first convention two years later—and these conventions are still taking place—the next one is in September in upstate New York.  Visit www.friendsoffreddy.org to find out more information, not only about this year’s convention, but about the history of the series, the newsletters and so much more.

While you may not have heard of Walter R. Brooks or the Freddy series, you have probably heard of a Brooks’ short story “Ed Takes the Pledge.”  No?  Well, that short story was the basis for the 1950’s television series, Mr. Ed and even non-baby boomers know “a horse is a horse, of course, of course…”!

I’ve read four Freddy books so far and each has had its own charm.  Obviously, this entire series—and this particular title—are pure escapism, chock full of cliffhanger chapter endings and simple, yet endearing lessons for living life the way Freddy does—honestly, sometimes perilously, not always happily, but always hopefully.  He is the flip side of the crafty, evil pigs of Animal Farm and for that alone, you just have to love him.

The Wheel on the School

by Meindert DeJong

Pictures by Maurice Sendak

1955 Newbery Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Literature

Ages 10 & Up

Review by Sandra Miller-Louden

I started this book with a prejudice against it.  First was the title—what did it mean?  Second, I’ve been reading Newbery Gold winners since 2004 at a steady pace and found some to be outstanding, others mediocre and still others definitely not for children, but rather aimed at librarians who cast the deciding votes as to which book receives the Gold.  And while no particular era has a stranglehold on the “outstanding, mediocre or not-for-children” designations, books written in certain decades have definite characteristics peculiar to that decade.

The Wheel on the School, written in 1954, is told in third person, not in today’s more “hip” first person.  It has chapters and chapter titles which immediately tends to date it (although which personally I find to be charming).  Children are part of a two-parent home, where father works as a fisherman and mother tends the home.  The teacher is treated with respect and, in turn, treats his students with fairness, yet with discipline.  And while the children take a huge role in defining and solving problems, they are still guided by adults.  They are not more “in touch” than adults and do not, at the end of the day, miraculously solve all situations that their parents or teachers were too jaded, preoccupied or clueless to understand, define or do anything about.  This slant is definitely at odds with today’s focus.

By Chapter 3 of The Wheel on the School, I was hooked, however and stayed that way until I finished it.  The premise is simple:  When something seems impossibly impossible, that’s the time to believe it just must happen—and so it will.  In this story, the “impossibly impossible” is having storks return to the fishing village of Shora in Holland (today’s Netherlands).  Lina, one of six school-age children in the tiny village, starts it all when she writes an essay for school that asks why there are no storks in Shora.  Her teacher encourages the class (consisting of Lina and five boys) to find out for themselves. Through talking with their parents and neighbors, they find out that besides having no trees (except for a cherry tree in the yard of a scary man named Janus) where a stork would feel protected, the village also only has steeply-pitched, pointed roofs where the storks cannot find space to nest.  They’re told that placing a wagon wheel on each roof would give storks a flat, comfortable place to nest.

Armed with this information, their teacher then sends them out to find a wagon wheel and advises them to “look for a wagon wheel where one is and where one isn’t; where one could be and where one couldn’t possibly be.”

And so they do.  And as they do, they discover many things along the way.  Lina talks to an old woman in the village and understands for the first time, the way the village used to be. Two of her classmates, twins Pier and Dirk, encounter Janus in his wheelchair and find out he’s not as mean as everyone thinks.  Above all, the children are finding out about determination, disappointment, working together and not always believing everything that’s in print.  These and other subtle themes are gently woven throughout the text—simultaneously a page turner loaded with adventure combined with a poignant, simple story capable of reminding us that dreams can become reality.  If ever there were a book tailor-made for a movie, this is it.  I’m stunned no one has stepped forward to make it.

If you have children in your life who are not natural readers, read this book to them.  If you don’t, read this book anyway.  You won’t be sorry.