By Lois Lowry
In Nazi-occupied Denmark, a ten-year-old girl helps hide her Jewish best friend and carry a secret that could get them both killed.
It's 1943 and the Nazis have occupied Copenhagen. Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen race each other down the street and grumble about school, until the night soldiers begin 'relocating' the Jews of Denmark and Ellen's family is suddenly in danger. Annemarie's parents take Ellen in and present her as a third Johansen daughter, and when soldiers stop them in the dark, it's Annemarie who has to look one in the eye and hold her voice steady. Then comes an errand through a black wood, a basket to be delivered and a boat waiting at the coast.
This is the book that shows a child what historical fiction can do: put them inside a real, frightening moment in history through the eyes of someone their own age. Lowry keeps the sentences plain and the chapters short, so the reading never gets ahead of a newish independent reader, but the tension is genuine. It's a first taste of the Holocaust that centers courage and rescue rather than horror, which makes it a rare thing, a book that tells the truth about a terrible time and still leaves a child feeling that ordinary people can be brave.