Imatge de l'autor
97 obres 7,043 Membres 49 Ressenyes

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Crèdit de la imatge: From author page at amazon.co.uk

Sèrie

Obres de Paul Dowswell

True Survival Stories (1970) 497 exemplars
The World Wars (2007) 419 exemplars
Heroes (2001) 276 exemplars
Auslander (2009) 226 exemplars
The Ultimate Book of Dinosaurs (2000) 202 exemplars
Medieval Messenger (1996) 189 exemplars
The Roman Record (1997) 166 exemplars
Tales of Real Escape (1871) 157 exemplars
Egyptian Echo (1997) 128 exemplars
True Stories of Polar Adventures (1810) 104 exemplars
Greek Gazette (1995) — Editor — 100 exemplars
Escape (Usborne True Stories) (2007) 92 exemplars
Tales of Real Survival (1995) 88 exemplars
The Viking Invader (1997) 73 exemplars
Eleven Eleven (2012) 42 exemplars
Ghosts (Usborne True Stories) (2008) 41 exemplars
Sektion 20 (2011) 37 exemplars
Tales of Real Heroism (1996) 36 exemplars
The Royal Boil (Phonics) (2000) 30 exemplars
The Cabinet of Curiosities (2010) 28 exemplars
Wolf Children (2017) 16 exemplars
Wild Weather 15 exemplars
True adventure stories (2003) 14 exemplars
The Red Shadow (2014) 14 exemplars
Hair Decoration (Body Art) (2004) 13 exemplars
Medicine (Great Inventions) (2001) 11 exemplars
Space (Great Inventions) (2001) 10 exemplars
Pirate Attack (2011) 10 exemplars
Bomber (2015) 10 exemplars
The Vietnam War (Cold War) (2001) 9 exemplars
Transport (Great Inventions) (2001) 8 exemplars
Wave (2016) 6 exemplars
True Stories Ghosts (2019) 3 exemplars
The Mud Pack (2002) 2 exemplars
The Great Revolt (2020) 2 exemplars
Slavné útěky z vězení (1995) 1 exemplars
PAUL DOWSWELL, I FIGLI DEL LUP (2018) 1 exemplars
Ausländer - Straniero (2020) 1 exemplars
Les animaux (1998) 1 exemplars
Tositarinoita paoista (2003) 1 exemplars
War Stories 1 exemplars
O ÓRFÃO de HITLER 1 exemplars

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Ressenyes

6/10, it was ok.
 
Marcat
Law_Books600 | Hi ha 2 ressenyes més | Nov 3, 2023 |
I’m a sucker for historical fiction of any kind, but I especially love the stuff concerning the 20th century.

I bought this book eons ago, in my first year of Sixth Form, and have only just now read it. I remember a classmate had bought the same one and seemed to be enjoying it, so I had decided to do the same.

Dowswell’s novel, aimed at young adults, is about a young boy named Piotr (Peter later) whose family is killed during the occupation of Warsaw in World War Two. Left alone, he is sent to an orphange, and eventually chosen to be adopted by a good German family, Nazi sympathizers who look at him and think he is the poster boy for the Hitler Youth. Peter looks exactly like the boy on the poster, in fact – he has incredibly Nordic features, with blonde hair, strong jaw, and toned build. For all intents and purposes, he should be the perfect fit for a Hitler Youth. His new family actually enroll him in one of the Hitler Youth groups, as they do to all their other children, and at first he’s excited. His lifelong dream has been to become a Luftwaffe pilot, and this could very well be his ticket into all this. His adopted father is a professor at a university in Germany, studying genetics – more specifically, he’s studying ways in which genetics can tell apart Jews from non-Jews. And Peter, in the beginning, is 100% OK with this.

But Peter, thank God, suddenly realizes that maybe all this isn’t too good an idea.

You see, Peter isn’t German. He may look German (or like the Aryan ideal that Germany loved to talk about back then), but everybody knows that he isn’t. He’s an outsider in the new community, no matter how hard he tries to fit in. And he develops strong friendships with young teenagers who aren’t exactly sympathizers with the Nazi ideal. He listens to swing music and BBC radio, broadcast from England. He feels sorry for the Jews being forced to do manual labour around the city, and tries to help them. He fights back with his thoughts when people talk about how great Hitler is. He isn’t convinced. And that is important enough to save him from Germany in the end.

Peter’s story feels like it could be real – the story of a boy who wants to leave a country that he realizes is not as great as it seems. He becomes part of an underground network – a very illegal one – that helps Jews, and he eventually tries to skip town. The whole thing is a very real and very raw telling of what could possibly have happened during World War Two. If you think about it, really, it can’t have been that all Germans were as ecstatic about Hitler rising to power as we think they were. While there were fanatics, it can’t have been the same for everyone. And this novel’s last section – its Act Four, if you will – brings it all to a head when a family and Peter try to run away from the hellhole they’ve been living in to a safer place, a neutral place.

(Switzerland, d’uh.)

This book is well researched (and even credited!), and Dowswell put a lot of thought into the writing of it. While it is written for children, it’s incredibly good as a light summer read, and puts World War Two into a different perspective. For a long time, we’ve heard stories about what it was like to be on the Allies’s side, or the Jews’ side. But sometimes we never stop to think what it could have been like for the people living in Germany who just didn’t want it to happen in the first place.

(Please don’t take this as me invalidating the experience of the actual victims of World War Two. It’s just a nice change of pace to have a different perspective to the whole thing, is all.)

Overall, my final rating is a 4/5. Props, Dowswell!
… (més)
 
Marcat
viiemzee | Hi ha 10 ressenyes més | Feb 20, 2023 |
 
Marcat
hcs_admin | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Jan 3, 2023 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
97
Membres
7,043
Popularitat
#3,479
Valoració
3.9
Ressenyes
49
ISBN
445
Llengües
13
Pedres de toc
21

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