![]() ![]() The ending is taut: Korinna and her parents must go into hiding behind someone else's bedroom wall. Still, readers will be caught by the courage of the Righteous Gentile family and by the changes in Korinna as she gets to know these Jews as people. No more would she smell the sweet flowers of spring. Instead of the understatement of Holocaust accounts like Leitner's The Big Lie (1992), there's melodrama ("No more would she walk through the beautiful countryside. The illustrations are awkward and superfluous. The history is accurate, and the plot is dramatic but, unfortunately, the writing is florid, with contrived dialogue and with tears and trembling on every page. Aren't Jews vermin? What if the authorities find out? Should she report her parents as traitors, as she has been taught to do? This novel won the Milkweed Prize for Children's Literature. Korinna is a loyal member of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany, and she is appalled to discover that her parents are hiding a Jewish family right there behind her own bedroom wall. ![]()
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