Once there was a boy called Felix. He misses his parents who have left him in a Catholic Orphanage in the mountains of Poland. They told him they would return for him as soon as they could. He figured they are very busy with their bookshop business. It has been three years and eight months, but he has kept his secret well. Felix isn’t Catholic at all, he’s Jewish.

Felix has a kind heart and a wonderful imagination. Writing his stories down in a yellow notebook his parents have given him, he also uses his stories to stop bullying and to help others he believes are worse off than him (after all, he isn’t really an orphan) and make them forget their worries.

Men in armbands arrive at the Orphanage and to his horror, begin burning their books. Felix knows he must leave to warn his parents. They have to hide their books before these men find them. Leaving a note, and completely unaware to what is really happening, Felix is strong in his belief that he must go home.

But home isn’t home any longer, he is yelled at, chased and even shot at. His mind reeling, he begins to realise all this anger mustn’t be about just books. A fire in the distance draws him through the dark. It’s a burning house, with bodies strewn across the ground in front of it. Chickens, a man, a woman, and a little girl. She’s alive. She’s unconscious, but alive.

Her name is Zelda. She is six, cheeky, bossy and soon so attached to Felix she risks her life to stay by his side.

Felix is such a wonderful character – kind, thoughtful, quick thinking and imaginative. Also incredibly innocent and naive at first, his imagination filling in the reasons for strange then terrible things happening right in front of his eyes. Soon it is all too awful to try and explain away any more. The Nazis hated Jews. All Jews. Even little old ladies and babies. He doesn’t understand why, but still tries to make things better for other children around him.

Getting to know Felix is a treat, but increasingly heart wrenching as I shook my head, knowing what was happening as he still reasoned it away with imagination. He talks directly to the reader – You know when… instantly making the connection to him even stronger. The first in this series, I read this years ago. After presenting a writing workshop at a primary school, a boy came up to me to tell me about his favourite books. This was one of them.

I was surprised at the time of a boy of approximately ten enjoying this harrowing story, but it is written in such a readable, straight forward way, that senior primary school students can process it and learn about the terrible thing that was the Holocaust.

Author – Morris Gleitzman

Age 10+

Read Chapter 1 of Once here and also learn how this story came to be.

Read more reviews of the rest in this family of books (Click on a Book Cover)

(2005, Puffin, Holocaust, Orphanage, Poland, Jewish, Nazis, Books, Just William, Imagination, Kindness, Danger, Courage, Ghetto, Learning the truth, Trains, Book Burning, Murder, Shooting, WWII, War, Germany, Hitler, Series, Historical, Grief, Poverty, Secret)