Once

Once upon a time begins many a fairy tale and this is the fairy tale in the mind of a young Polish boy who happens to be Jewish and who is living in an orphanage in 1942. Once upon a time Felix had a happy home with his parents who sold books in their bookshop. Now the Nazis have come along and according to the tale Felix spins in his own mind, they don't like books. To protect him his parents have tucked him safely away in an orphanage but they'll be coming back any day now to take him in their arms and continue their loving family life. Which tale would you rather believe? The one about the Nazis who want to kill and destroy anyone or anything with a hint of the Jewish faith? The one in which you are stunned to find a carrot floating in your soup? The one in which you treasure the first bathwater rather than the water filled with grime and grease of the bodies who have washed before you? The story in Felix's head leads him to escape from the orphanage to find his parents. He heads back to his village and his home only to find strangers walking in his living room and visible through his windows. Where are his parents? How can he find them? Felix is headed for a journey into the real world of brutality and hatred and destruction as he seeks sanctuary and love. Told through his eyes, the eyes of a child, the world takes on truly human and inhumane dimensions and young readers will walk in Felix's shoes and perhaps feel more privately and concretely the agony, the inhumanity and the horror of this time in the history of our planet. 165 pages Ages 12 and up