Rating: 3/5
This book tells the sad and half-true story of a little girl living in Copenhagen during WWII. Although Annemarie Johansen isn’t Jewish, she and her family decide together that they will do anything it takes to protect Annemarie’s Jewish friend and her parents from the Nazis.
This is part of the introduction written by the author:
“The Danish friend who originally told me the story of her childhood in Copenhagen in 1943, and who became the prototype for the fictional Annemarie, is an old woman now. So am I. We both love thinking of the children reading the story today, coming to it for the first time and realising that once, for a brief time and in a small place, a group of prejudice-free people honoured the humanity of others.”
I enjoyed this book, but I think that I would have liked it more when I was a little bit younger. I particularly liked Lowry’s way of writing—simple, to accommodate its young readers, but touching and sad, too.