Tension builds swiftly in this wrenching tale as Felix, a preteen Polish Jew, narrates his experience of Holocaust atrocities, framed by a search for his parents that begins when he escapes from a Catholic orphanage. A natural storyteller, Felix begins each chapter with a formulaic prelude: “Once I was living in a cellar in a Nazi city with seven other children,” before chronicling events in which his narrative gifts provide comfort and courage to himself and others in increasingly bleak circumstances. After finding his home occupied by hostile neighbors, Felix witnesses pointless murders on a forced march. Gleitzman (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Toad Rage) allows readers to draw conclusions before Felix does (he thinks a book burning is being conducted by “professional librarians in professional librarian armbands”), making poignant Felix's gradual loss of innocence when he realizes that Hitler is not a protector but “the boss of the Nazis,” and when he finally accepts his parents' deaths. The humorous dimension of Felix's narration provides welcome relief, while courageous acts of kindness by Catholic nuns, a German neighbor, and a Jewish dentist lend this tragedy universality. Ages 12–up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Apr.)

The horror of the Holocaust is told here through the eyes of a Polish Jewish child, Felix, who loses his innocence as he witnesses Nazi-led roundups, shootings, and deportations. After nearly four years in a kind Catholic orphanage, he runs away to find his parents. First he returns home, where he is chased away by new residents. Then he journeys to the city (that is, the ghetto), gets help from other fugitives, discovers the Nazis' incomprehensible brutality, and is forced into a train bound for the camps. Through Felix's traumatized, present-tense viewpoint, readers learn of the genocide, in which books and bodies were burned en masse, as well as one victim at a time, including a baby who is shot dead in its high chair. Most moving is the lack of any idealization. Felix rescues a lost little girl, but rather than idolize him, she fights and fumes: Don't you know anything? Felix escapes, but one and a half million Jewish children did not, and this gripping novel will make readers want to find out more about them.

Eve (Eve) must leave the safety of Califia in order to search for love-interest Caleb; she winds up in the City of Sand, where she discovers that the king is her father. Resistant to her princess role, Eve secretly meets with Caleb, who is planning a rebellion. This dystopian series remains engrossing; several plot twists and a cliffhanger ending build suspense.

When his Jewish parents place young Felix in an orphanage in war-torn Poland, they tell him that they must leave to fix their book business. Felix knows they will return. Curiously, one morning men in dark suits storm the orphanage and start burning books—these must be the people his parents have fled from. Others call these men Nazis; Felix doesn't understand. Determined to be reunited with his family and to save more books from being burned, Felix runs away. But during his travels he sees even more horrors: People are beaten, starved and shot. All because of books? Felix's misconceptions are heartbreaking, and readers will wince as he slowly and painfully gets closer to the truth. Packed with plenty of sadness, Felix's story is also touched with hope. He meets a kind-hearted man, loosely based on the real-life Janusz Korczak. A resonant shot to the heart—Gleitzman delivers a sharp sense of what it must have been like to be a child during the Holocaust, forced to grow up far too quickly. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

Gr 6-9 Felix lives in Poland in 1942, and reading is his survival mechanism. Now almost 10, he was sent to a Catholic orphanage three years and eight months earlier by his Jewish bookstore-owning parents, and he's convinced himself that the sole reason he remains in hiding is because Nazis hate books. He's a natural storyteller, and when he finds a full carrot in what is typically a woefully thin bowl of soup, he fantasizes that it's a sign from his parents that they're finally on their way to take him home. When the orphanage is visited by surly Nazis instead of joyous parents, Felix escapes with only his cherished notebook full of his stories into the nearby countryside, still hoping for a family reunion. He soon discovers a burning home with two slain adults in the yard and their young daughter bruised but still alive. He takes Zelda on his journey, shielding her from the reality of her parents' deaths in much the same way he's been comforting himself, by inventing alternative realities. But, as he encounters the escalating ugliness of the death marches that are emptying his old neighborhood, now a ghetto, Felix becomes increasingly conflicted about the need to imagine a hopeful order and the need to confront brutal reality head-on. An easy first-person narrative in terms of reading leveland a good choice as a read-aloudthis Holocaust story also taps gut-punching power by contrasting the way in which children would like to imagine their world with the tragic way that life sometimes unfolds. Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI

After three years and eight months in an orphanage in the mountains, Felix finds a whole carrot in his soupùan extreme rarity. Believing the carrot is a message from his parents, he embarks on a journey through Nazi-occupied Poland to his former home. Unfortunately Felix has not been educated about the Nazi sentiment toward people of Jewish descent, and when he sees the Nazis burning books, he assumes their hatred is directed at booksellers. When he finally arrives in his hometown, he learns that everything has changed and a new family is living in his house. A courageous man named Barney appears to rescue Felix and brings him to a cellar to hide with other children. Barney is willing to sacrifice his safety, yet he cannot save the children from the trains that will carry them to the camps. It is not until the middle of the book that Felix begins to realize the Nazis do not hate Jewish books but Jewish people. FelixÆs na´vetÚ will likely remind readers of the narrator of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by Boyne (David Fickling Books/Random House, 2006/VOYA December 2006); despite the similarities, the first-person narrative is distinct, and FelixÆs journey will be a uniquely moving one for readers. The son of booksellers, Felix reveals his joy for storytelling in the way he crafts a beautiful narrative despite the gruesomeness of his surroundings. Even in the end, he maintains that he has been lucky for all the moments of delight he has felt, if only once.ùAmy Wyckoff.