The ugly brutality of the Jim Crow South is recounted in dulcet, poetic tones, creating a harsh and fascinating blend.įact and fiction pair in the story of Rose Lee Carter, 13, as she copes with life in a racially divided world. It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. The fictional plotters-based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells-are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious.

During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. (historical note, author’s note, bibliography) (Historical fiction. References to duct tape (then newly invented), McDonald’s and other pop culture lend authenticity to this phenomenal story of the beginnings of radical change in America. Wiles’s “documentary novel,” based on her own childhood memories and the first in The Sixties Project trilogy, has a striking scrapbook feel, with ingeniously selected and placed period photographs, cartoons, essays, song lyrics, quotations, advertisements and “duck and cover” instructions interspersed through the narrative. Adding to the pressure are her college-student, activist older sister, who may be a spy, her aspiring-astronaut younger brother, who refuses to eat, her steely, chain-smoking mother, who has inexplicably burst into tears, her often-absent pilot father, now spending long days on base, and her PTSD-suffering, World War I–veteran Uncle Otts, who’s digging up the front yard to build a bomb shelter. Franny’s spot-on “Heavens to Murgatroyd” dialogue captures the trepidation as the world holds its breath during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Just as 11-year-old Franny Chapman squabbles with her once-best friend in their neighborhood near Andrews Air Force Base, outside of Washington, D.C., President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev are also at odds.

Countdown by deborah wiles