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It's 1943, and Hanneke Bakker, 18, has been working as a black market runner in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam for quite a while now and she is good at what she does.  Finding and delivering her customer's requests in the basket of her old bicycle allows Hanneke to keep herself and her parents safe and provided for in a city where everything is rationed.  And since she looks like "the girl Hitler is dreaming of to put on his Aryan posters," Hanneke prides herself on being able to charm her way out of any impromptu Nazi searches.

As Hanneke makes the rounds, delivers her goods, she wills herself to remain distant from her customers, no matter how hard they try to befriend her.  But, one day, after delivering the usual black-market tea to her recently widowed customer, Mrs. Janssen, Hanneke is asked to find something different.  In fact, Mrs. Janssen has been harboring a 15 year old Jewish girl named Mirjam Roodvelt in her pantry.  Mirjam had shown up at her door, pale and wearing a too small sky blue coat, after the Nazis had found and killed her family and Mrs. Janssen's husband for hiding them in his factory.  But now, Mirjam has gone missing and Mrs. Janssen would like Hanneke to find her, a job she believes the young woman can do, given her black market skills.

At first reluctant to accept Mrs. Janssen's request, little by little Hanneke finds herself drawn into the mystery of Mirjam's disappearance.  Visiting the Jewish Lyceum where Mirjam went to school, Hanneke is spotted by a woman who works there.  The woman turns out to be Judith, a friend of Hanneke's brother Ollie.  Both are part of the Dutch resistance.  And now, so is Hanneke, whether she wants to be or not.

At the same time she is looking for Mirjam, Hanneke is dealing with her own complicated war-time heartaches. Her best friend from childhood, Elsbeth, has fallen in love with and married a member of the Gestapo, putting a wedge in the friendship.  And Hanneke is trying to cope with the guilt she feels over the loss of her boyfriend Bas, killed in 1940 trying to defend Holland against the Nazi invasion.
Now part of the Dutch resistance, Hanneke discovers just how much she doesn't know about what is going on around her.  It turns out that Mrs. Janssen isn't the only one of her black market customers who are hiding Jews from the Nazis, and that their beautiful movie theater has been turned into a deportation center. Thinking that perhaps she can find Mirjam there, she arranges a visit with Judith to meet her cousin Mina, an acquaintance of Mirjam's.

As Hanneke begins to put together the puzzle that is Mirjam's disappearance, she begins to understand more and more what is going on around her, and how much she has missed by focusing only on Bas and Elsbeth, not even seeking closure, but allowing her to keep her eyes closed.

Does Hanneke find the girl in the blue coat?  And can she come to terms with her own guilt and loss? Girl in the Blue Coat is a complicate story, but one that you will most likely find difficult to put down.

To begin with, Hanneke is a nicely flawed character.  Though her intentions may be good, she acts impulsively, and because she hasn't paid attention to what is happening around her, she often unwittingly puts herself and others in peril.  

And to be truthful, the book is a little flawed as well.  For instance, I never quite figured out why Hanneke decides to look for Mirjam, it just sort of happened.  Was it curiosity?  An attempt to assuage her guilt over Bas?  An inner drive to see if she were as good at her job as she thought she was?  As Hanneke uncovers the ways in which so many others try to sabotage the Nazis and save as many Jews as they can, I asked myself whether her initial motivation to find Mirjam really matters and decided it didn't.  What matters is that she accepts the challenge and that is the first step towards her own healing and enlightenment.  

Narrated in the first person by Hanneke, readers will find themselves completely engrossed as they accompany her on her coming-of-age journey towards self-discovery and recovery.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

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Original 1962 Edition, which is what I read

Books about the Netherlands during World War II are generally about the Dutch Resistance, but Hilda van Stockum has focused more on the daily experiences of one very close knit, religious family living, but without ignoring Resistance activities.  

At ten years old, Joris Verhagen can barely remember what life was like before the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940 when he was 4.  Life is hard for the Verhagen family - father, a 4th generation millwright, mother, Dirk-Jan, 14, Joris and Trixie, 4, but because they lived in a working windmill, things were not quite as hard as for others in their small village.   Now, after four years of Nazi occupation, everyone is hopeful that the Allies will soon arrive.

The novel is told as a series of connecting vignettes that show how the family quietly worked hard to resist the Nazis.  And so there are some wonderful moments in which their occupiers are outsmarted, like the downed RAF pilot who Joris discovers hiding in an old abandoned windmill and the amusing way that he was he was hidden in plain sight by Joris's Uncle Cor before escaping back to England.

Or the two little girls who come to stay with the Verhagens after their parents are forced into hiding and their absolute faith that St. Nickolas will show up at the Verhagen door with Christmas surprises.

Even little Trixie has a very surprising story.

There are some scary, tense moments as when Leendert, an adolescent, becomes a landwatcher for the Nazis, even though his own parents are against them and threatening to turn his own father in.  Always trying to win favor with the Nazis, Leendert like to throw his weight around, like pushing a young girl off a broken-down bike with wooden wheels, causing her to loose consciousness, but not before she manages to toss her satchel into the bushes.  Joris later discovers, when he retrieves the bag for her, that it is full of Resistance newspapers.

There is so much more that happens to the Verhagen family, and their friends and neighbors, all related with such compassion.  But at the heart of everything, is the Winged Watchman.  It is the Winged Watchman that ultimately saves the day for so many of them.

The two main characters, besides the windmill, are Joris and brother Dirk-Jan, who are portrayed as quite heroic, but not without a certain amount of fear.  And who can blame them, living in an atmosphere of betrayal and danger.  The most striking descriptions are of the hunger and homelessness that so many Dutch experienced by the winter of 1944 (known as the Hunger Winter) because the Nazis confiscated more and more of the food grown in Holland for themselves and because so many homes were bombed.

The Winged Watchman was written in 1962 and may feel a little dated and the writing may seem a little stiff to today's young readers, but it is still a compelling story of resistance and courage.  The family is deeply religious and van Stockum shows how that also helped the Verhagens preserver throughout.

I also learned two intersting facts about windmills in this novel.  The Winged Watchman is not a mill used for grinding, but was used for draining the water out of areas below sea level in order the reclaim the land below the water.  The reclaimed land is called a polder.  The water is diverted to a canal and is kept out of the reclaimed land by a dyke.  This kind of windmill, of course, plays an important role in The Winged Watchman, so it helps to understand what it is all about.

The other interesting fact I learned is that windmills were used to send coded messages from member of the Dutch Resistance to other members right under the nose of the otherwise ever vigilant Nazis.  The messages were read according to the location of the windmills sails, or the different color stripes of cloth tied onto them and sent windmill to windmill.  Most Dutch citizens were ferociously patriotic, with only a few traitors like Leendert.

Hilda van Stockum was born in Rotterdam, Holland, and she clearly loved her country very much,
though by the time World War II began, she was living in the US, having married an American.  She based many of the occurrences in The Winged Watchman on letters and stories of relatives who remained in Holland.  Van Stockum was a prolific writer and in 1935, her short novel A Day on Skates: the Story of a Dutch Picnic was a Newbery Honor book.

The Winged Watchman is still in print and can be found in most bookshops and libraries and is still a worthwhile book to read.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was a hand-me-down from my sister


 

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It is Fall 1942 and the Nazis have been occupying Holland since Spring 1940.  Beatrix, 6, and her mother are Jews who have been running and hiding from the Nazis for that long.  But now it is time to hid Beatrix in a safer more stable place.

Sitting on the tram, on their way to meet the woman who would take Beatrix to safety, her mother is suddenly taken away by the Nazis who regularly board and search the trams looking for Jews.  Beatrix is left sitting on the tram by herself.

Brothers Lars, 63,  and Hans Gorter, 65, both life-long bachelors, work together on a tram - Hans driving it while Lars collects tickets.  When it looked like the Nazis were also going to take Beatrix away, Lars suddenly told them that she was his niece.  The war and all the rumors they had heard about Nazi treatment of Jews suddenly became real for the brothers.

Now, these kind, well-meaning though naive brothers must learn how to care for a little girl, who has been traumatized by the loss of her mother and who must become someone different than who she really is - if only for the duration of the Nazi occupation.  Luckily, Hans and Lars have help from their elderly neighbor Mrs. Vos, 80, and from a new, younger neighbor, Lieve van der Meer, 30, who husband is rumored to have escaped Holland and is flying for the RAF.

Why would two older men who have made it a point to always live quietly and keep a low profile, suddenly risk everything, including their lives, for a little girl they know nothing about?  That is the question at the heart of The End of the Line and Canadian author Sharon McKay answers it eloquently as the story of Beatrix and her new uncles unfolds.

There are lots of books about Jewish children who were rescued by people during the Holocaust and who did what they did simply because they believed it was the right thing to do.  But these stories are generally written from the point of view of the child.  What makes The End of the Line stand out is that it is written from the point of view of the two brothers. and yet it is a thoroughly appealing, totally engaging book for young readers accustomed to reading about protagonists their own age.

Living under Nazi occupation meant living under a daily shroud of fear and anxiety, never knowing if you were going to be singled out at any given moment.  There are plenty of these moments portrayed in the story of Hans, Lars and Beatrix, like the time Beatrix whispers Geb Achting, Yiddish for be careful, to a young Nazi soldier.  However, the story offers more insight into what it was like for the brothers in order to survive the war and the occupation of Holland, from dressing Beatrix as she grows, managing to find food when there is almost none to be had, even to buying her a doll to cuddle and comfort herself with may be new experiences for Hans and Lars, but keeping her safe from the Nazis turns out to be instinctual for these kind brothers.

The End of the Line is an interesting supplement to Holocaust literature written for young readers by an author who is part of the Canadian War Artist Program and has already written books about child soldiers in Uganda, young girls caught in the war in Afghanistan and short stories dealing with the Holocaust with Kathy Kacer, another Canadian artist who also writes books for young readers about the Holocaust.  This should be a welcome addition to any library.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was received as an E-ARC from NetGalley

You can find more information and a very useful lesson plan for The End of the Line from the publisher HERE

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Most people are familiar with the story about how and why Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the attic of her father's business in Amsterdam after Adolf Hitler's army invaded Holland.  The diary she wrote as a young teenager is a priceless artifact of those terrible times.  Anne, her sister Margot, and her mother did not survive after they were captured by the Nazis, only her father lived.  But Anne diary has become a symbol of courage, innocence, and one of the most tragic periods in recent history.

But if you knew Anne and her family were hidden away from the Nazis, you also probably figured that there were more, many, many more that we haven't heard much about.  Indeed, according to Marcel Prins, author of  Hidden Like Anne Frtank, approximately 28,000 Jews went into hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland.  Of those, around 16,000 survived, and 12,000 did not.  Fascinated by his own mother's story of hiding and surviving, Prins collected stories of other children like her, and the result is Hidden Like Anne Frank, fourteen true stories of surviving the Holocaust by Jewish youths, both boys and girls, stories that are all different, all dangerous, all told in their own words.

Prins begins the book with his own mother's account of going into hiding.  Only 5 at the time, Rita Degen was forced to lie about her age and say she only going on 5, not 6, so that she wouldn't have to wear the required Yellow Star that marked her as Jewish.   She was quickly removed from her first foster family when someone recognized her, but luckily placed by the resistance in another home, where she was wanted.

Frightened by the deportations, Bloeme Emden, 16, was one of the people to be called up.  Her father managed to get it delayed, but that didn't last long.  She was told that if she didn't show up, her parents and younger sister would be taken.  Bloeme managed to get away again, but ultimately ended up in Auschwitz, where she ran into friends from school - Margot and Anne Frank.  Her parents and sister did not survive the Holocaust.

Hiding, constantly needing to change your identity, both name and religion, forced to lie and to live in fear are all part of the stories by these fourteen survivors.  At times, most of these youths managed to survive with the help of the Dutch Resistance, at other times, they simply survived by their own wits using creativity, stealth, craftiness.  Some found themselves in situations where they welcomed and cared for, others were taken advantage of, or terribly mistreated.  They were separated from their families and many never saw them again.  All of their individual stories attest to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Hidden Like Anne Frank is a fascinating, compellingly poignant collection of true stories.  The individual accounts are not very long, but they certainly convey the fear and danger that al Jews in hiding were forced to live with day by day, never knowing if they would see tomorrow or not, if they would see their loved ones again or not.  Prins has included lots of old photographs from the times before and after the children were hidden and at the end of the book, there are recent photographs of each person who contributed their story.

Hidden Like Anne Frank book should have lots of appeal for young readers, many, no doubt, will be drawn to it by Anne's name on the cover.  But it is also a perfect collection for any classroom when students begin studying World War II and the Holocaust.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was received as an eARC from NetGalley

Be sure to visit the website devoted to Hidden like Anne Frank to hear more stories of survival told by these and other survivors.

This is book 1 of my European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader

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Sunday - Monday, 03.09 – 03.10.2008 Grand Rapids/Holland, Michigan

My chauffeur picked me up from my house in Arizona at 11:00 AM to drive me to the airport. Actually, he was 15 minutes early, which made me happy. I would soon find that all Carey drivers arrived a good deal earlier than scheduled, which really gave me comfort during a time when I felt like I wasn’t completely in control of my everyday actions.

This was my first experience with having a driver. I had questions – where do I sit? Do I tip? My driver ushered me to the back seat, passenger side, where water bottles awaited (and a TV). And yes, you tip the drivers in the black sedans, most of whom are Carey drivers. But you don’t tip the media escorts (more on media escorts in the next entry).

Brrrr! I arrived in Grand Rapids around 9:30pm local time and made my way to the rental car desk at the airport, only a little worried about the piles of snow I saw outside – I haven’t driven on snow in four years. Luckily the roads were dry and clear. Why am I renting a car and driving myself? Because I am crossing the state in the next 24 hours and media escorts basically drive within their greater city area only. There was no one who was available to drive me the 2.5 hours from southwest Michigan to southeast Michigan. My lovely publicists at S&S made sure well in advance that I was comfortable with the plan, which I was -- I grew up here and have made the trip from Holland to Novi many times. I felt very comfortable driving myself.

I made my way to the elaborately appointed Amway Grand Hotel downtown to spend a (very) short night. They greeted me with an envelope – my publicist had thoughtfully sent a copy of my itinerary to the hotel for me. I found out they did this at every stop. It made me feel important, lol.

Starving, I grabbed a room service burger at 11 p.m. The 3-hour time difference had me still twiddling my thumbs at midnight, unable to sleep when my body thought it was only 9pm. A few hours later I finally managed to doze off and the 6 a.m. wake-up call was pretty hard to take when my body said it was 3 a.m. But I was SO excited, because Holland is my hometown. So the adrenaline kicked in. Breakfast in the room while I packed up again. I drove into Holland (about 45 minutes away), met my media escorts, Amy and Michelle from Treehouse Books, and was off to West Ottawa High School, where I presented to three classrooms. Afterward, I had 2.5 hours to make a round-trip back to Grand Rapids to stop at two excellent bookstores. I stopped at Schuler Books on 28th Street and at Pooh’s Corner in Breton Village (my old place of employment while in college and afterward). I signed books both places so if you were unable to make it to Treehouse for the signing, you can find autographed copies in Grand Rapids.

Then it was back to Holland for an after school gig, again with West Ottawa HS, this time a wonderful book club of students grades 6 and up. We had a terrific discussion and some pretty great homemade salsa, too.

I had a couple hours to spare after that, so I stopped in to spend some time with my parents, and then made my way back downtown Holland to see my sister-in-law’s awesome art collection on display at Uptown Gallery. Her name is Michele Gort and she’s a wonderful painter. To my chagrin, the store was closed for the day, and I’d missed my only chance to see her collection up close. Luckily, I could see them through the store window...not the same, but better than nothing.

Back at Treehouse Books, I arrived to find two LOVELY myspace friends already there and waiting. It was so great to meet them both for the first time! After them came a steady stream of people including all my dear family members. The signing lasted nearly until the 9 p.m. closing time and we sold some 65 books or so. As things settled down, I had a great and rare opportunity to chat with Danny Reyes, who is a terrific musician and a dear friend of my husband’s (and mine). But too soon it was time to pack up and head out to the next place – Novi, Michigan, and a 2.5 hour drive to my next hotel. The drive gave me a great chance to come down off the high of a fantastic signing and seeing all those old friends and relatives. Exhausted is an understatement, but it was a good sort of exhaustion.

Thanks, Treehouse Books! Hope to see you in July when I’m back in town.

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It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but I’ve had the pleasure of giving a flurry of presentations that I promised attendees I’d link to from here. I love that the Illinois educators I spoke to at the end of February were just as enthusiastic as the Dutch librarians who attended my presentations in the Netherlands. Thank you to everyone who came to them all and helped make this a very special time for me.

I’m still uploading pictures from the Netherlands trip on Flickr, but I will definitely post about the amazing Delft and Amsterdam libraries I had the great fortune to visit (special Flickr sets to appear online soon).

• Gaming in Libraries at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators
• Emerging Technology Trends and Tools that Make Your Online Life Easier at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators
• Gaming in Libraries: Intersections of Service at the UGame ULearn conference in Delft
• Tagging Your World at the Tagging conference in The Hague

educators, gaming, holland, illinois, netherlands, presentations, tagging

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Last year I wrote the September/October issue of Library Technology Reports on Gaming in Libraries: Intersection of Services as a general overview that could help jumpstart a discussion in a library (especially with a department head or administrator). During the next few weeks, I’ll be writing an update to that issue, so I’m curious what you’d like to see in this new edition.

My intent is to broaden the discussion about gaming to include a more holistic view of the topic, beyond just video games, as well as diversifying the audience for gaming in libraries beyond just teens. So I have a pretty good idea of what I want to write about, and although I’ll have a shorter length to work with (half as long as the first one because TechSource is trying to reduce the cover price of LTR), I’d still like some input. What questions do you need answered? What do you need help explaining to others in your institution? Which areas need some further exploration?

I’m also hoping to highlight a few more case studies if there’s room. I’m particularly interested in showcasing unique gaming services offered by school and rural public libraries or services to nontraditional patrons, so please let me know if you think you’re doing something good.

Please leave a comment and share your thoughts. Thanks!

gaming in libraries, gaminginlibraries, library technology reports, ltr, techsource

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Karen Schneider gives us the facts that have been missing from the media handwringing about the Maricopa County Library District’s switch from Dewey to BISAC. Go read it, understand what they did and the good and bad outcomes from their decision.

dewy, maricopa, techsource

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