Tag: WWII

The War Below (previously: Underground Soldier)

A companion to the award-winning books Stolen Child and Making Bombs for Hitler.

Fourteen-year-old Luka works as an Ostarbeiter in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, alongside Lida from Making Bombs for Hitler. Desperate to escape the brutal conditions of the labour camp, he manages to get away by hiding in a truck under a pile of dead bodies.

Once free, Luka joins a group of Ukrainian resistance fighters. Caught between advancing Nazis in the west and Soviet troops in the east, they mount guerilla raids, help POW escapees, and do all they can to make life hard for the Nazis and Soviets. After the war, Luka must decide whether to follow Lida to Canada — or stay in Europe and search for his long-lost mother.

Underground Soldier is a companion book to Stolen Child and Making Bombs for Hitler, and a perfect entry point into the series for new readers, as the books can be read in any order.
Continue reading “The War Below (previously: Underground Soldier)”

lovely letter

Hello Marsha,

My name is T, and I would like to tell you this wonderful story.

My mother had given a copy of your book, Nobody’s Child, to my teenage children about a year ago. Being an Armenian, and having read many books based on the Armenian Genocide, I was curious about the information contained in this little book. As I read it over the past summer, I fell in love with it and immediately got and read Daughter of War. I was amazed at finding all the delicate, small but important details in those two books, things that I had not seen in the many books I had come across before.

In our school district for 10th grade English class the children have to choose a book from a list of books, representing conflicts in the history of different nations, and write a research paper on that subject as well as present it to the rest of the class.

Last year, with my daughter being in that class, she wished to do her paper and presentation about the Armenian Genocide.
Since she had not yet read any books on this subject, and there were no books about this in the class list, I suggested Nobody’s Child and the teacher approved. She did an excellent job with both the paper and the power point presentation, scoring a perfect grade plus extra credits. We were thrilled with this; but there was more to come.

The teacher had liked the book and added it to the list. This meant that as of January 2011, for years to come, every 10th grader in our district will be told the true facts of the Armenian Genocide, based on your book.

Thank you for a beautiful book.

T