The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

The beginning of this book says it all:

It’s morning. Soft gray light slips over the tall redbrick wall. It stretches across the exercise yard and reaches through the high, barred windows. In a cell on the ground floor, the light shifts dark shapes into a small stool, a scrawny table, and a bed made of wooden boards with no mattress or blanket. ON that bed, a thin, huddled figure, Helmuth, a boy of seventeen, lies awake. Shivering. Trembling.

It’s a Tuesday.

The executioner works on Tuesdays. (page 3)

In this fascination book of life in a Nazi prison and flashbacks of Helmuth’s life, readers discover first hand what it is like to grow up in Germany during the time of Hitler, Nazis, and WWII.

What I Thought:
I picked up this book for two reasons:

1. I really enjoy historical fiction and memoirs about the WWII and Holocaust. This is because when I was in the sixth grade, we read Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. This book remains one of my all time favorite books of all time!

2. The cover and back cover (which has what is in the summary above) are absolutely gripping and I knew it was a book I couldn't’t pass up!

This book is actually quite different than any book I’ve read before in this particular subject matter. It is sad and maybe a little predictable, but just the same it gives a new perspective to an important time in our world’s history.

Want to see more? Check it out on Amazon: The Boy Who Dared: A Novel Based on the True Story of a Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.