Nicholas Winton organized the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. Winton kept quiet about his humanitarian exploits for many years, no telling anyone, not even his wife Grete about his wartime rescue efforts. In 1988 Grete found a detailed scrapbook in their attic. It contained lists of the children, including their parents' names, and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. During that year, leters were sent to these addresses and 80 of "Winton's children" were found in Britain. The world found out about his work later that year during an episode of the BBC television programme That's Life! when he was invited as a member of the audience. Little did he know that some of those survivors had gathered to give him a wonderful surprise!
Now
By Morris Gleitzman
Morris Gleitzman's acclaimed story of friends Felix and Zelda in Nazi-occupied Poland has captured the hearts and minds of readers worldwide. In "Now", he delivers the final chapter, bringing this most moving of stories into the present day.
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by Sonja Hartnett
Her muzzle wrinkled, and Andrej saw a glimpse of teeth and pale tongue. 'They smell the same, ' the lioness murmured. 'My cubs smelt as she does. Like pollen.' She breathed deeply again, and Andrej saw the missing cubs returning to her on the wings of the baby's perfume. 'All young ones must come from the same place,' she said: then sat down on her haunches, seemingly satisfied.
Under cover of darkness, two brothers cross a war-ravaged countryside carrying a secret bundle. One night they stumble across a deserted town reduced to smouldering ruins. But at the end of a blackened street they find a small green miracle: a zoo filled with animals in need of hope.
A moving and ageless fable about war, and freedom.
Army Reservist Ryan Smithson was only 19 when he went to Iraq as an engineer, and the experience haunted him for years. Smithson ended up writing a college essay about one of his first missions there, which not only impressed his professor—but also led to Smithson’s first book, Ghosts of War: My Tour of Duty. (HarperTeen, 2008). more » » »
Walter Dean Myers.
Two-time Newbery Honor author Walter Dean Myers is no stranger to war. His father served in WWII, his brother died while fighting in the Vietnam War, his son was stationed in Qatar during the first Gulf War, and his grandson served in Iraq at the beginning of the current conflict. Understandably, the author has a deeply personal connection to the subject of his latest novel, Sunrise Over Fallujah, narrated by a teenage soldier deployed to Iraq. Next month, Scholastic will release the novel with a 50,000-copy print run, as well as a 20th anniversary paperback edition of Fallen Angels, Myers’s Coretta Scott King Award-winning novel set in the battlefield jungles of Vietnam.Myers also has firsthand experience in the military, having served in the Army for three years, after enlisting on his 17th birthday. "When I joined the Army," Myers recalls, "I had a romantic notion of war, having read World War I British poetry and watched films about World War II." That image was soon shattered. His brother’s death in Vietnam caused Myers to reflect further on war and its meaning and led him to write Fallen Angels. "I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic," he explains.
