Zofia used to love playing a funny game with her Mama, Tata and Aunt Barbara. It was called Make a Choice. When at home and happy with them it was silly choices like being eaten by a bear or sat on by a circus elephant. Now Zofia is far from home after German SS soldiers pounded on their front door until her father let them in.

They weren’t there for her Polish Resistance parents or her kind Aunt. They were there for Zofia herself. Her bright blue eyes and blond hair had marked her out as a possible subject for the Lebensborn Program – an experiment by the Nazis.

Thrown onto the back of a truck where many other children huddle in fear, Zofia is taken to an orphanage. She is frightened, missing her parents and realising for the first time, every child around her also has blond hair and blue eyes. They are fed and clothed and Zofia enjoys the change from her poverty stricken home, but her family game stays strong in her mind.

Speak Polish, or German to please her kidnappers?

Have new clothes and real leather boots, or be home cold and hungry with her parents?

Be naked, or be slapped and still forced to be naked for the many tests they perform on every child in the orphanage?

Her choices are now what determines life as a German girl or being sent away to be never seen again.

Inspired by true events, Waiting for the Storks is another window opened by Katrina Nannestad into stories of war we might not of heard before.

Thousands of Polish children were stolen by German soldiers and indoctrinated into German lives. Not all were adopted into German families for their blond hair and blue eyes. If they didn’t fit a strict measurement system, they were then sent to camps or into slavery.

The contrast between Zofia’s life with her struggling but very loving Polish family home into a wealthy German one is well written and gradual, just as the real indoctrination would have been. It is not gentle by any means however, showing readers how fear helped the moulding process of these small Polish children into believing they were German.

Zofia is a likeable character, as a poor but happy Polish girl then a treasured German child. Her confusion is real on the page as she begins to remember things from her past. I loved the way storks are woven throughout the story, not only connecting to the title but bringing the story around on itself, back to these beloved birds.

In the rear of the book is more information about the Nazi’s Lebensborn Program and then the Allies efforts to return Polish children to their families after the end of WWII.

Author – Katrina Nannestad

Age – 9+

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(2022, Harper Collins, WWII, World War 2, Germany, Poland, Stolen, Kidnapped, Family, Fear, Courage, Orphanage, Friends, Indoctrination, Changed name, Heil Hitler, Identity, Poverty, Slavery, Kindness, Lebensborn Program, Aryan Race, Germanic, Blond and Blue Eyed, Animals, Pets, Bullies, Crime, Friendship, Grief, Growing up, Historical, Racism, Secret, )