Review: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Code Name Verity
Elizabeth Wein
Disney/Hyperion
Published February 6, 2012

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After enduring long hours of torture, Verity, a prisoner in an abandoned hotel in Nazi-occupied France, promises to tell her German captors everything she knows. She begins with recollections of her best friend and pilot, Maddy. As Verity writes Maddy’s story, she recounts the early days of friendship and recruitment as a wireless operator in England. Life for Maddy, a simple country girl with a gift for mechanical engineering, drastically changes on the day she meets a bold woman pilot whose plane needs repair. For Maddy’s friend, a lost German pilot becomes the catalyst that sets in motion her own transformation.

While … Continue reading

Review: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Knopf Books for Young Readers
Published March 14, 2006 (Orig. published 2005)

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A mysterious narrator gives an account of a young girl who has an unusual vice: she steals books. Death comes for the girl’s brother as she and her mother wait for a train to take them to a foster home where the children will be safe. It is he, the collector of souls, who is the only witness to the girl’s first thievery, and he begins to follow her story.

Life in Liesel’s new home is a difficult adjustment, plagued with nightmares, but through them, she and … Continue reading