Odette's Secrets - Hardcover

Macdonald, Maryann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159990750X ISBN 13: 9781599907505

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 2013

Synopsis

Odette is a young Jewish girl living in Paris during a dangerous time. The Nazis have invaded the city, and every day brings new threats.

After Odette's father enlists in the French army and her mother joins the Resistance, Odette is sent to the countryside until it is safe to return. On the surface, she leads the life of a regular girl--going to school, doing chores, and even attending Catholic Mass with other children. But inside, she is burning with secrets about the life she left behind and her true identity.

Inspired by the life of the real Odette Meyers--and written in moving free-verse poetry--this is the story of courage, of determination to survive, and of a young girl forced to hide in plain sight.

About this title

About the Author

MARYANN MacDONALD has written more than twenty books, including The Costume Copycat and The Little Piano Girl. She lives in New York, New York.
www.maryannmacdonald.com

From School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-This story opens as World War II is beginning and the persecution of Jews in France is escalating. After Paris falls to the Nazis, Odette is rushed to the countryside, where she hides in plain sight by living with a family and pretending to be Christian. There she struggles with her identity. The strength of the novel lies in MacDonald's meticulous research, which is explained in an author's note, of the real Odette Meyers, whose photos are included. The author weaves in facts about Odette's life and the events taking place at the time with imagined scenarios in which Odette may have found herself. However, the author's free-verse prose style makes readers acutely aware that an adult is trying to write from a child's perspective, and it sounds not so much poetic as fragmentary and unorganized. This book is a good introduction for children interested in how the war and the Holocaust affected the everyday lives of kids their age, but in a field with so many classics and reinterpretations of similar stories, such as Judith Kerr's When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (Collins, 1971), Lois Lowry's Number the Stars (Houghton, 1989), Jennifer Roy's Yellow Star (Marshall Cavendish, 2006), and Sandi Toksvig's Hitler's Canary (Roaring Brook, 2007), it's an additional purchase.-Anne Barreca, New York Public Libraryα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 159990750X
• ISBN 13: 9781599907505
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240